A trip to Asakusa - City of temples in Tokyo

It was from Morishita sensei that I heard about Asakusa first time while I was attending Japanese language class at OVTA. She mentioned about Asakusa while referring the Japanese word ‘Omiyage’. Omiyage in Japanese means gift or presentation. She told, there are plenty of traditional Japanese Omiyage shops in Asakusa.

Asakusa is a tourist spot both for people visiting in Tokyo from other parts of Japan and for foreigners. Today I got that opportunity to go to Asakusa. In fact, I was thinking to visit Asakusa for quite sometime after hearing about this place from Morishita sensei. I made the trip with a friend who was also wishing to visit Asakusa.

Asakusa is famous for its Sensoji temple. It is a Buddhist temple. Asakusa is a district in Taito Tokyo. There are several more temples in Asakusa, as well as various festivals. Asakusa is a traditional Japanese city famous for its temples and festivals.

Coming out of the A4 exit of Asakusa line (Tokyo metro), we asked the way to a Japanese girl standing in front of the exit. She could partly understand our broken Japanese, but she could manage to direct us to the desired location. We walked to the location to where she pointed her finger.

There were many foreign people on the road. I was surprised by seeing the man pulling rickshaws on the road. There are still these kind of old traditional vehicles seen in Tokyo! I could not resist taking photos of those rickshaws on the Asakusa road. I had a wrong notion that rickshaws are popular in India only. Now I realized that was my biggest mistake. I have seen a plenty of human powered rickshaws in India’s Northern states. Still those are bicycle connected. Human pulling rickshaws are considered a human rights violation.

In Asakusa, these rickshaws are maintained as part of tourism. Nobody really want to travel long distances in rickshaws. Sitting and travelling in human pulling rickshaws bring back memories of past mode of transportation. Later I learned that in Japan also rickshaws were popular. Probably I made a big mistake before realizing now that the word rickshaw have its origin in Japanese word Jinrikisha.

In Jinrikisha, we can see a combination of three words like Jin, riki, and sha. The word ‘Jin’ means human or person, ‘riki’ means power or force, and the word ‘sha’ is for vehicle. So, the word ‘Jinrikisha’ is human-powered vehicle! It was a new knowledge for me when my friend explained the concept of Rickshaw. Moreover, my wrong concepts of origin of human powered vehicles were being rewritten when I visited Asakusa. English people called human-powered vehicles ‘Pedicabs’.

Asakusa is famous for its ‘Omiyage’ shops. The street that leads to the Sensoji temple and the nearest area are full of Omiyage shops. We could see many women dressed in Traditional Japanese kimono. Asakusa is famous for geisha population also, I heard.

Asakusa was the center of entertainment in Tokyo for a most part of 20th century Japanese life. Now the attraction for entertainment has shifted to Shinjuku from Asakusa. Still Asakusa is famous for its classical Japanese films as many of the tourists are elderly Japanese who visit Buddhist and Shinto temples of Asakusa.