Japan 2: Imperial Palace Grounds and Asakusa Kannon Temple.
The Imperial Palace is only open two days a year, during festivals, but the outer gardens are normally open for visitors all year round. Except on Mondays and Fridays. We went on a Monday.
The current buildings date from the 1800s (when the Imperial capital was moved to Tokyo), but before it became the Imperial residence, the site was home to Edo castle, the residence of the Tokugawa Shogunate, from the 1600s onwards.
Here are the guards not letting us into the gardens. They were very good at their job.
The Imperial grounds are covered with Black Pine trees which are symbols of longevity and are often used for bonsai.
The only bit of the Imperial grounds I got to look at: The fortifications. According to the guide the moat was eight metres deep, I'm rather skeptical of that. It was deep enough to be full of koi and terrapins (again symbols of longevity).
The watch tower, looking good for two hundred and something years old.
Roof detail. Those fish tails are all over traditional buildings because of the belief in elemental magics. The idea being that because water is the elemental opposite of fire, water creatures will protect against fire damage, which was a constant risk when the primary building materials were paper and wood.
This image sums up Japan pretty well: The new and the old lying side-by-side. You don't see it much in Tokyo though, as the city was fire-bombed so heavily during World War Two that most of the city was destroyed.
For some reason (sponsorship? commission?) the tour also included a jewelery store famous for its cultured pearls. They gave us a demonstration of how cultured pearls are manufactured, a process that is invasive at best and horribly cruel at the worst - depending on how much you like oysters. They said they wanted someone to model a "unique pearl" (heart-shaped) and, much to my mortification, picked me. There was no polite way to refuse and I don't care if being hand-picked out of a room of young women means that I may possess a perfect column of flawless alabaster for a neck, or not, there was no amount of DID NOT WANT that covers my reaction to it.
Needless to say I didn't buy anything from the store, but was given a pair of flannels as "payment" for my "modelling services". Oh the glamour.
Asakusa Kannon (also called Sensō-ji) is a very important Buddhist temple with a Shinto shrine as part of the complex. This is worth noting as approximately around eighty percent of Japanese people are simultaneously practicing Shintoists and practicing Buddhists, so you tend to see elements of both religions within the temples. I love religious syncretism muchly, so this made me very happy.
The temple is dedicated to the Bodhisattva Kannon, the Japanese transliteration/pronunciation of Guan-Yin/Kuan-Yin. Kannon is associated with compassion and mercy and is sometimes depicted as an androgynous creature or a woman with facial hair, as well as a more feminine form: This is supposedly due to her Sanskrit origins as a male figure (don't ask me to clarify that, I'm not a scholar of Buddhism or Indian theology).
Partial map of the temple layout, so you can see the scale and variety of the different structures.
Hozomon gate: The Inner gate of the complex, houses the temples protective sutras and guardians. On one side is a street of pilgrimage, souvenir and food shops, on the other is the inner grounds of the temple. There's another outer gate beyond the shops, but I didn't have time to walk that far.
Gate detail of a lotus above the archways. I love my camera.
This wooden boss of a dragon is on the underside of the giant lanterns you can see hanging down within the gate.
One of the pair of sutras on the gate: These things are huge, but you don't really get a sense of scale in the photo. These make going through the gate a purification ritual.
One of the guardians inside the gate. I have no idea who it is and there are so many different guardian creatures in the different Buddhist sects that I haven't a prayer in identifying it.
Large incense pot, just being that close to it made me sneeze. Worshippers are supposed to light incense and waft the smoke to where they feel the need benefit. So students would waft the smoke towards their heads and people suffering from leg pains would waft the smoke at their legs. You can see the base of the pagoda in the background of this shot.
Five-tiered pagoda.
Holy water font for drinking and washing.
Lantern with a manji symbol, the mirror-image of the swastik: The former is supposed to be associated with light while the later is associated with night. Even though I knew about the origins of the symbol I confess I still felt a tiny jolt of shock upon seeing it. I later bought a lantern with the symbol on to look at so I can reclaim it from the false negative associations it has in my mind.
Not sure what this is. A well? A water shrine? Saki buckets?
The main building.
Reverse perspective of the previous image, from within the building. That grilled thing at the front is a donation box.
The side of the main building.
The interior of the main building. I only took this one quick crappy picture because there were people worshipping and I didn't want to intrude any more than I already had.
Sacred tree? Seems to have a fungal infection causing pendulous growths. Made me feel itchy.
Statue of a famous kabuki actor. No idea why his statue is part of the temple complex, but it's pretty awesome regardless.