Senso-Ji and the Prayer Beads (No Picture)

You know, I pondered not telling this story, but what the hell, this is my blog, and it is related to my travels so here we go.

I suppose I should warn you, this particular post goes into the messed up nature of my digestive tract. So, this will be a clean post, but there will be some shit that people might not be interested in. 

So, if you remember the post about my visit to Senso-ji it was the same day that I visited the Skytree. The day was really drizzly and I was actually feeling pretty good about my ability to make it to the top of the Skytree. If you know me, you know I am terrified of heights, and frankly I didn't really stay up top for very long. At this point in the day, all I'd had to eat was the piece of cake you can see in that particular post. Honestly, I didn't eat nearly as much as I wanted to in Japan, but that is unimportant for now.

Anyway, I got down from the Skytree and as I said, I was feeling pretty good, so I decided to start walking to a nearby temple. Senso-ji was always on my list of places to visit, so it worked out pretty well. Well, the walk started out okay. The drizzling stopped, although the day remained pretty cloudy. My good feelings kind of evaporated when I hit the picture of the bird in the river. Suddenly my stomach was doing backflips, and that is never a good sign.

It should be noted here, that ever since my gall bladder was removed, I have had an iffy relationship with food to begin with. Some days things sit fine, other days the exact same thing will go rushing through me like it was Taco Bell. So, I'm really used to these times when my stomach starts doing backflips. Looking at the map, and judging by past experience, I figured I should be able to make it to the temple without problem.

As I got closer to the temple though, the backflips became more insistent. I began looking for anyplace that might have a public restroom. I didn't care if I had to be a paying customer, I was prepared to throw a handful of yen on the counter and book it if necessary. I found a Starbucks, because of course I would find a source of coffee in Tokyo. Seriously, the city is obsessed with coffee and convenience stores. Anyway, I could not find the bathroom in the Starbucks, so I went on, looking frantically for a public restroom. 

I made it to the gates leading to the shrine market? I don't honestly know what they are called. Google search tells me these are called Nakamise, and this particular one is perhaps the most famous shopping street in Asakusa. (source) Anyway the picture of the beginning of that street is about 3 down from the bird. Now I was left with a choice... do I continue on through the crowd and hope, or do I turn back and hope. Obviously I decided to continue on.

This street was wall-to-wall, shoulder-to-shoulder people, and I almost immediately regretted my decision to continue. My digestive tract was betraying me, and I didn't know how long I would have. Now it is worth noting that the nakamise is a series of shops, but they are really like open-faced stalls. They were selling snacks, and trinkets and all kinds of fun stuff I wish I could have taken a look at, but my stomach was angry, and the crowds did nothing to alleviate that. So I pushed on through a 250 meter long sea of people. Or to put that into American terms, almost 3 football fields.

I will note here that my intestines had decided to ramp up the urgency. Also worthy of note is that there is almost an hour pause between my picture at the entrance to the nakamise, and the next picture taken at the entrance to the temple itself. I was fully convinced I was going to shit myself in the crowd of people. But then, like divine revelation, the international sign for public toilets came into view. It was like a ray of sunshine had broken through the clouds of the day, and shone down on my salvation. A choir of angels sang in my ears (well... it was actually some random J-pop, more on that in a future post perhaps.)

I practically ran at this point to make it to the promised land. I would like to note as well, that the public restrooms I ran into in Japan were much cleaner than the ones I tend to find stateside, and this was no different. But in all fairness, it could have been covered in shit, and I wouldn't have cared.

After this brief salvation, I made my way out and took that picture of the front of the temple. It was roughly at this point I made my way inside, and decided that I owed this temple a great debt for providing this point of relief. And this is why I now have the prayer beads in my possession. I will not even begin to mention how much those beads cost, but considering how much I needed to use the temple's facilities, I owed them every yen if not more. So I also bought the charm against evil, and the good fortune charm... 

And I have since managed to lose one of those two charms. 

There is nothing else really interesting in this story... But I did tell you there was going to be some shit that will not be interesting...