Nezu Shrine

The moral of today's story is:  Never Leave the House Without Your Camera!!!!

My saving moment of serendipity occurred when I decided to make use of the camera on my keitai (=cell phone).  Much less than ideal, but still better than nothing.  Thanks to this miniature miracle of modern technology, today's post comes complete with photos, even if they are somewhat small...

Anyway, with that as an introduction, let's get on with the story so you know why I regretted not taking my camera with me. :)

I had a meeting midday up in Tokyo in the Nezu neighborhood, which I haven't precisely been to before.  It's adjacent to places such as Tokyo University and Ueno, which I have been to, but somehow until now I'd never strolled through this precise part of the city.  Definitely time to rectify that mistake!

After finishing my meeting, I decided to follow the signs pointing to the neighborhood shrine.  I walked along a large avenue lined with all sorts of little store fronts selling traditional foods and goods...I saw a sushi shop, a sembei (rice cracker) shop, a daigaku-imo shop (daigaku imo, aka "university potatoes" are worth a post of their own...candied potatoes with black sesame.  Doesn't sound like much, but just wait till you try them!); shops selling pottery, traditional wooden baths, and several flower/plant shops.  Oh, and a light bulb shop, too!  And that was just the few blocks between the station and the shrine.

Here are the daigaku imo I brought home with me.  Yum!!!

 
Nezu Shrine turned out to be fairly large with a main building and several smaller surrounding shrines.  There were koi ponds (with turtles, too!) and a big fancy entry gate that looked more Chinese to me than Japanese, painted all red with gold, blue, yellow, green, etc. detail work. 

Here are some turtles sunning themselves (love turtles!):

Hmmm, they're kind of washed out in this photo.  Well, just imagine about 6 or 7 of them enjoying themselves right where that white, glare-y spot in the center of the photo is!

Here's the gate (sadly, detail work is shadowed):

 
And when I walked through the gate, I discovered a wedding party all dressed up in traditional kimono having their pictures taken!  I snapped a quick shot, too.  Here are the bride and groom:

Continuing on, I went up the the hill to one of the small shrines alongside.  That path leading into it was lined with several hundred small torii that I walked through.  Here's the view of the first part of the path:

This is the shrine that all the torii lead to. I  took this from down below, so you could see the small pond it's reflected in.

So that was today's adventure.  I picked up a visitor's map of the Nezu area and it looks like it's positively chock full of shrines, parks, traditional craftsmen's shops and so forth.  It takes about 90 minutes to get to from home, but if I head up that way again, I'll definitely save time to explore some more!