Sweet Potato Town

The planning for our 2025 Japan trip started way back in March of 2024 with a hotel reservation for eight nights in Tokyo. That hotel booking was quickly followed by a flight purchase to and from Tokyo's Haneda Airport just as soon as flights were available to bookend our hotel resy. Those two actions meant we'd be spending every night of this trip in one hotel in Tokyo. One hotel? For the whole trip? Yep, I know...it's rare for us. 

But one and only one hotel in Tokyo didn't necessarily mean we'd be spending every day in Tokyo. We wanted to explore a little beyond the city limits.

Our initial draft itinerary for this vacation had a few days with trips out of town. Mount Fuji. Nikko. And a walk in the woods somewhere north and west of the city to find some wasabi in the wild. But as we refined and refined the plan, gradually all those day trips fell away as we piled more and more Tokyo stuff onto our list. Eventually we were left with staying entirely in the city with just one-half day trip out to Yokohama, which we really considered to be part of Tokyo. I know it's not, but it sort of is in my mind.

Then at the last minute we decided our itinerary wasn't quite full enough and that we should stay true to our initial impulse and find somewhere a little bit further afield. For just one day. We picked Kawagoe, which we'd never heard of but which we found when paging through a borrowed Japan travel guide. The town (pronounced in Hopwood phonetics ka-WAH-go-eh) is about 90 minutes by subway and train from the hotel we had picked as our base of operations and seemed to have a few things that would hold our interest for a few hours.   

And so what's in Kawagoe? Well of course (and why would you expect anything different on this trip?) some temples and shrines (have to keep filling the goshuin-cho...) and some sakura. Let's face it, we weren't going anywhere on this vacation that wouldn't have a sakura or two or two dozen and we read that Kawagoe had a river towards the north end of town flanked by cherry blossoms on both sides. 

We also looked forward to a little shopping in an old part of the town that featured some historic warehouses (or kurazukuri) in a style of building that we likely wouldn't find too many other places in Japan. The kurazukuri date from a time in Japan's history when Kawagoe served as an important way station for goods all over the nation on their way to Tokyo. As commerce thrived, merchants from Kawagoe needed sturdy, fire-proof warehouses to store their valuable commodities so they built very expensive and very permanent buildings along the town's main street. These today are converted into various sorts of food and merch stores.

And in case you are wondering why I'm going shopping while on vacation, Japan is a Mecca of consumerism. They have the best stuff for sale there all over the place.

Kawagoe's Time Bell Tower. Keeping time and chiming since 1894.

And none of that was the biggest draw to Kawagoe for us. But let's not rush that. Let's spend a few paragraphs on the temples and shrines shall we? Or more accurately...one or two on one of each. Because we have to cover temples and shrines at least in a little detail. 

I wrote in an earlier post that we made an effort on this Japan vacation to curate our list of temples and shrines so we'd have something to remember each visit by. It's easier to remember a place with piles of daikon radishes all over the property than it is to remember a wooden temple or shrine hall with a wooden pagoda which you go see by walking under a wooden torii or two. And yes, pretty much all the temples and all the shrines in Japan are made out of wood.

If we had been hard-er core about temple and shrine visits on this vacation, we could easily have visited many more houses of worship in Kawagoe. But we figured two was enough when we found (1) a temple advertising 500 statues of buddhist monks and (2) a shrine that sold fortunes contained inside little red snappers that you have to fish for out of a bowl using a miniature fishing rod. That and a tunnel of ema, or prayer tablets, purchased and left at the shrine property so the prayers (I guess) have a higher probability of coming to pass. Assuming you believe that stuff.

The red snapper shrine (Hikawa Shrine) was worth a visit. We fished for (what is likely) a papier-mâché red snapper (it will now become a Christmas tree ornament, something it was NEVER intended to be), walked the tunnel of ema and made sure to check out Kawagoe's collection of sakura along the river (or was it more of a large stream?) just immediately to the north of the property.  We did not linger too long here. There's only so much fortune fishing you can do.

And no, we didn't feel the need to try to get one of each color of snapper (see below). Ours is the lighter color.

Hikawa shrine's basket of fish fortunes and tunnel of ema.

The temple was more memorable, although admittedly, we found nothing here to re-purpose as a Christmas tree ornament.

The temple we visited in Kawagoe is called Kita-in Temple. It was founded (it is believed) in the ninth century C.E. and like most good temples in Japan, it has burned down at least one or two times (I find references on line to fires that destroyed the place in 1202 and 1638). Remember the whole wood construction thing. Fire likes wood. Temples have burned a lot in Japan.

Sometime during the middle of the second millennium C.E., it became fashionable (and I'm probably overstating and dumbing down things here a little bit) for buddhist temples to acquire or commission a series of statues of Rakan, early disciples of the original Buddha who achieved full enlightenment and lived forever in a state of Nirvana. It started in the late 1600s in Tokyo and after that, other temples insisted on adding their own collection. Kita-in started working on theirs in the late 1700s and it likely took about 40 years to have them all carved.

They are pretty amazing. 

Find the sign on the temple property to the 500 Rakan; follow it loosely and imaginatively (it took us at least three attempts to find the statues); and you'll enter into a fenced enclosure holding row after row of robed figures in a variety of poses with a full range of facial expressions. Apparently no two are alike and I believe it. We didn't see any obvious duplication in our time checking out as many of the different figures and faces as we could. And I realize from the photograph above you can clearly see the temple's pagoda from the place where the statues site but I swear, it doesn't work the other way around. These things are concealed well.

While we didn't try too hard to check that there were no actual identical twins in the statuary, we  did spend some time finding a favorite or two and then leaving some yen in coin form next to some of our most beloved fellows. I picked a dude with a monkey on his lap (I know...always with the Year of the Monkey with me...) and the only figure I could find with a cup which of course I assumed held beer or wine or some other tasty beverage. He looked happy...what can I say? I'm thinking I could hang with that dude and try to get a little bit closer to enlightenment. Or something like that. I'd bring a cup too.

Oh...and apparently the sign is wrong. There are apparently 540 statues. We didn't count. Being in that space (and it was just the two of us), I felt remarkably connected spiritually to Japan and Buddhism. Sounds strange but it's true. There was a certain peacefulness to just moving between and around those figures. I'm sure the rain that kept everyone else away helped.

The Rakan with the monkey is in the bottom pic. See my earlier post for the dude with the cup.

But none of that was what made us visit Kawagoe. Don't get me wrong, that stuff all helped. But we picked Kawagoe because they are apparently renowned for their sweet potatoes. And Japanese sweet potatoes are certainly very special. Kawagoe is sweet potato town!

After we were done with visiting Kita-in and Hakawa and having seen the the town's famous wooden bell tower (yes, it burned down or was at least damaged by fire a few times) and the gorgeous kurazukuri warehouses, it was lunchtime. And there is all manner of sweet potato treats to be found in town if you look hard enough. Sweet potato fries. Sweet potato pudding. Sweet potato candy. Sweet potato noodles. Sweet potato with eel. Sweet potato ice cream. Sweet potato with chocolate. Yeah...we didn't have any of those things.

First bite? Sweet potato red bean paste buns. 

If you had told me 13 years ago before I started exploring places other than North America and Western Europe that I'd leap at the chance to eat some red bean paste and sweet potato enveloped by a soft and squishy and mostly tasteless rice dough called mochi, I would have said you were crazy. But that's what travel in general and Japan in particular has done to me. Red bean paste? Mochi? And sweet potato? And all freshly hot from the steamer? Yes, please.

So look...mochi red bean paste buns are a must have when you are in Japan. I don't mean a must have like durian in southeast Asia or Brennivin in Iceland kind of way. Not a rite of passage, I-can't-believe-you-just-consumed-that sort of thing. I mean these are genuinely sweet cravables. And add some thinly sliced sweet potato to add texture and extra sweetness. Good stuff! It disappeared quickly.

But what we really needed was a just plain roasted sweet potato. We found just that in one of the kurazukuri on the west side of the town's main street. Just sweet potato. No toppings. No gimmicks. No frills. No extra flavors. Just sweet potato. Roasted to perfection.

I don't know what it is about the sweet potatoes in Japan. I don't know if they just have better raw materials than we do here at home in the United States or what. But a simple roasted sweet potato eaten on the streets of some Japanese town or city is just mind-blowing. Ours were plucked out of the roaster, cut in half, dropped in a couple of pieces of custom-made cardboard and handed to us with a spoon in each half. The roast is so perfect that the flesh of the sweet potato separates from the skin with zero effort. And they are so rich and sugary that there is actual syrup to scoop out of the bottom of the skin. How on Earth do they do this?

What finishes off a good three mile or so walk complete with sweet potato lunch? Dessert, that's what. And I know what you are thinking...sweet potato ice cream? 

Naaaahhh. I already said we didn't have any of that. Dessert was sweet potato beer.

I will say that my past beer drinking experience in Japan has involved relatively straightforward, well-crafted and mild-tasting Japanese imitations of traditional German lager beer. And yes, the Japanese do it better somehow. So it was refreshing on this trip to have a glass or two of Japanese craft beer and there's no better place to get that in Kawagoe than at Coedo Brewery. They have a brewpub (or brew-restaurant is probably more accurate) near one of the two train stations in Kawagoe proper. 

This is not the first time I've had sweet potato beer (hello, Maui Brewing Company!) in my life. And to be clear here, this is probably beer that is brewed around or with sweet potatoes and not OF sweet potatoes. This one had body and thickness and taste and it was dark. What more could I want. Perfect end to the perfect (and only) day trip on our 2025 Japan trip. Kanpai!

Sweet potato beer (top). Kurazukuri (bottom).

There is one more and last thing I'll say about Kawagoe. 

Our walk from Kita-in to Hikawa took us down a ton of residential streets. Yes, you can get there by walking down the kurazukuri-lined street where we found our sweet potato treats but it's way out of the way. So we Google Maps-ed it and walked the shortest way we could down narrow streets and alleyways (some of the latter could have actually been some of the former). I swear I could have been walking through some small English town. I mean other than the obviously Japanese touches like the signs in kanji. 

It sounds crazy but I'll stick to my guns on this one. I think it was the tight streets; the tiny backed-in parked cars behind gates right on the street fronts; the overwhelming use of brick as a building material of choice; and the gardens. Especially the gardens. They all seemed to be super neatly kept and relied a ton on potted plants to add greenery, rather than flowers and other forms of greenery direct planted in the soil because, well, there's just not that much room for soil. Pots are more flexible.

How would I even make that connection? Well, I did live in England for 11 years and I still have family there and we have walked around the towns they live in a few times in the last dozen years or so. It's odd to say but the residential typology was remarkable similarly evocative. It was totally unexpected. 

I'm sure the rain helped. Rain always reminds me of England, especially when it's the type of rain that really makes you question if it's worth getting the umbrella out. We did.

So that's it. Kawagoe. Worth a train ride for a few hundred statues and some amazing, incredible, unctuous sweet potatoes. I don't know how they do it.

Last sakura picture on this blog from this trip. Kawagoe. Just north of Hikawa Shrine.

Goshuin-Cho Update

Warning: complaining coming.

For as long as I can remember in my life, I have been a collector. Football cards. Comic books. Stamps. Star Wars figures. Baseball cards. Coins. Records. CDs. Bobbleheads. Art. Autographs. Funko Pops. Funko Pop Incredible Hulks. I am sure I could go on and on and on and on.

A lot of my collections are long since abandoned (NOT, I should note, the Funko Pop Incredible Hulks) but in 2017, I picked up the start of a new collection: Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. This collection started on the slopes of Mount Fuji in May 2017 and continued as recently as this past April in Tokyo. While my collection of Japanese temples and shrines is very much experience and memory based (since I'm not ACTUALLY acquiring the actual properties), there is a physical manifestation to this collection: the goshuin.

Goshuin are temple seals, stamped images which are then personalized with calligraphy by the monks resident at the property you are visiting. A collection of goshuin is traditionally kept in a goshuin-cho, or temple seal book, which opens accordian-style to record your memories. Or I guess to allow others to record your memories would be more technically correct. Fill your goshuin-cho with a series of stamped and written souvenirs and you create a keepsake which is likely unique in this world. It really records your personal journey throughout Japan.

Since we had a few temple and shrine visits on our agenda for this trip, we brought the goshuin-cho we purchased at the Komitake Shrine on Mount Fuji all those years ago to get that volume a bit closer to being filled up.

But this year, collecting goshuin did not go as planned. We found a few things that were different.

What we had found at every temple and shrine we visited before this year was that you got a goshuin in exchange for about 300 yen. Sometimes we had to wait if the property was mobbed with people but that wasn't really a big deal. We'd just drop off our goshuin-cho as soon as we got to the temple or shrine and pick it up 20 minutes or so later.

The first temple we visited on this trip was Gotōkuji Temple west of the city, a veritable celebration of the waving cat (or maneki-neko) that populates Japanese and other sorts of Asian restaurants all over the United States and I'm sure the world. We found the temple shop, entered, inquired about a goshuin, handed over 300 yen and got a pre-stamped, pre-calligraphed (is that actually a word?) sheet of paper just a bit smaller than our goshuin-cho handed back to us.

What is this? A pre-printed sheet of paper? That's not what we wanted. What are we supposed to do with this? Glue it in the book? Really? Is this a cutback on labor? Are the monks who write out the goshuin out to lunch or just not working that day? It was pretty confusing. And no, we didn't pepper the dude behind the counter with all these questions. He didn't seem super engaged. 

This was shocking. And it was not the last time it happened. We purchased another pre-printed sheet at Kita-in Temple in Kawagoe and found no handwritten-on-the-spot option at Hikawa Shrine (also in Kawagoe) or at the cemetery of the 47 rōnin at Sengaku-ji. We stopped buying after Kita-in. Couldn't come to terms with whole thing, especially after discovering the second piece of paper we were handed in exchange for our yen was larger than our goshuin-cho. Disaster. What are we supposed to do with a piece of paper bigger than the actual book that it goes in?

Now admittedly, this did not happen at every temple and shrine we visited. We did get some actual goshuin written and stamped in our goshuin-cho. And because I've been recording in this blog which goshuin came from which site, I am doing the same thing here. The three pictures below record the filling of one side (minus one page) of our Komitake Shrine goshuin-cho. As usual and because it's Japan, I'm listing the goshuin right to left.

Sensō-ju Temple, Tokyo (right) from 2024; Gotōkuji Temple (preprinted), Tokyo (left).

Meiji Jingu Shrine, Tokyo (right); Fukagawa Fudō-dō, Tokyo (left).

Kita-in Temple (preprinted), Kawagoe (right); Matsuchiyama Shoden Temple, Tokyo (left).

I love the green stamp on the goshuin from Fukagawa Fudō-dō by the way. This is our second goshuin with different colored stamps (after Tomioka Hachiman last year). I'm also a little disappointed that the Matsuchiyama Shoden goshuin doesn't have a big old radish in it but I'm probably projecting 21st century western sensibilities there.

After our visit to Matsuchiyama Shoden, we were left with one blank page in our original goshuin-cho and we had just one more temple left on this trip: Sengaku-ji. Since the story associated with Sengaku-ji was so powerful for me (read about it here), we decided to go ahead and retire our Komitake Shrine goshuin-cho and buy a new one with an image pertinent to Sengaku-ji on the cover. Is this just blatant consumerism? Maybe. We wanted a new book and the right one was available. It's the book with the green paper sleeve in the cover picture of this post and immediately below.

And yes, I know that means we have a book with one page on one side of the book blank and had the whole other side entirely empty. Deal with it. We are.

Our new goshuin-cho is gorgeous. The front and back cover are yellow-gold in color and the front features what I can only assume are 36 of the 47 rōnin that avenged Lord Asano Naganori's death a little more than 300 or so years ago. It is different than the first goshuin-cho that we bought way back in 2017: the cover is paper (and not cloth) and the book is a little larger (which may explain why the pre-prepared goshuin we picked up in Kawagoe is bigger than the only goshuin-cho we owned at that time.

I mentioned earlier in this post that there were no on-the-spot goshuin available at the cemetery at Sengaku-ji but we still got our goshuin from our visit because there are actually two available at this temple. Although I will admit, I am disappointed that I couldn't get a temple seal from the very spot that the 36 rōnin (I guess 47 wouldn't fit?) on the cover are resting forever.

The goshuin that the monk who sold us our new goshuin-cho added to our new book was very different in one respect from all the other goshuin we have collected: it was free.

So that previous statement isn't exactly true. It's true that we didn't pay cash or credit for our goshuin at Sengaku-ji. But it wasn't completely free. It required the copying of a sutra or a piece of scripture by me while we were on property. And it's all in Japanese.

This could have been challenging. I mean I've never written in kanji before so I imagined my effort would be very, very sloppy as I copied a few dozen or more Japanese characters using a calligraphy pen from an example sheet to a brand new piece of paper.

They didn't make me do that. I was directed a series of drawers which contained different sutras, all printed on the back side of what looked to me like a sheet of vellum. I was simply required to trace over the letters with my pen. I am sure my attempt was less than perfect but it looks pretty impressive in the photograph above. I'm sure I flagged at the end and got a little sloppy. There are a lot of characters to copy.

It got me the goshuin below, the first entry in our brand new goshuin-cho which is now ready for more filling. When are we headed back to Japan again?

More Temples, More Shrines

Yes, the cover picture of this post is a stack of daikon radishes. Read on!

On each of our first two visits to Japan (I'm counting last year's 18 hour layover on the trip home from Singapore as "a visit to Japan"), we have spent a significant amount of time visiting Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. I like to think that it is a measure of respect that we have for the country of Japan and its residents that we do this. There is a spirituality about the entire nation and a sense of ritual and peacefulness and tranquility at each of the shrines and temples that we have visited, whether it's a major temple of national importance or a local shrine. There is a specialness in being at these places that is restorative. 

Does this strike you as odd or weird? I mean, would people visit 12 or 13 churches in Europe on a ten day trip like we did with these places in Japan in 2017? Actually...I think they would. I've certainly visited my fair share of churches on trips to Paris or London before and not given it a second thought. I see nothing wrong with this, particularly if there is some history about these places that is significant. Because after all, I do love me some history.

By the way, if you are questioning how we spent a "significant amount of time" at Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples on our 18 hour layover last year...consider this: we were in country for less than 18 hours, which included a full night's sleep in a hotel and getting to Haneda Airport at least two hours before our flight and we still visited one shrine and one temple. I'd say two in 18 hours total with a night's sleep in there and transit to and from the airport is significant.

Vermilion torii at Nezu Shrine, Tokyo.

Now, legitimately, these things are major tourist attractions and some of the most incredible experiences I've had in Japan have been seeking out and visiting these Shinto and Buddhist houses of worship. Admittedly, part of the attraction sometimes has little to nothing to do with religion. If you are ever in Kyoto, I'd highly recommend spending a few hours (yes...hours!) walking around Fushimi Inari Shrine. And if you make it to the island of Miyajima, you should definitely visit both Itsukushima Shrine and the Lovers' Sanctuary most of the way up Mount Misen. These are two incredible hikes but the shrines definitely improve the experience.

So how did we decide where to visit, exactly? Well, on our first visit to Japan, we went with a sort of "Top 10 Temples and Shrines in Kyoto and Nara" and visited every one because some guidebook or webpage recommended we do just that. It was awesome. For someone who knew nothing about Japan, it provided an incredible introduction to one part of the Japanese character. Last year, we went with a mini curated list (I mean it was just two in 18 hours...) and picked one of the most important Buddhist temples in the nation (Sensō-ji) and the Shinto shrine (Tomioka Hachiman) which can claim direct lineage to today's Grand Sumo tournaments. The latter was an awesome tie-in to one of our best experiences on our 2017 trip.

So when it came time to create an itinerary for a week in and around Tokyo in 2025, of course we had to visit some temples and shrines. But we wanted a list that included some of the most important properties in the nation and some that spoke to us and our experience and biases as well. In short, more curating was in order. 

Hundreds (or maybe thousands?) of maneki-neko at Gōtokuji Temple, Tokyo.

Before we get to what we found this year...maybe a quick refresher about Shintoism and Buddhism is in order. 

Shintoism is basically the O.G. religion of Japan. By and large, it has mostly stuck in Japan and not really spread elsewhere (Japan has a way of retaining an odd amount of exclusivity on Japan-originated things). The religion is centered around the worship of supernatural entities called kami which represent different aspects of life. Want to go visit a Shinto house of worship? Head to a shrine.

Buddhism is not a Japanese original. It started in India maybe a couple of hundred years before it showed up in Japan somewhere around the 600s and is based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama (the O.G. Buddha). The religion is centered around achieving a state of enlightenment which will either free you from an endless cycle of rebirth or allow you to stay enlightened and help others achieve the same thing. No shrines in Buddhism. Temples only.

This year's tally for a week mostly in and around Tokyo was five new temples and three new shrines. We took it easy. Although admittedly, we did make a repeat visit to Sensō-ji, although that was more of transit through visit with a stop at the bathroom. 

Decorated, straw-covered sake barrels. Meiji-Jingu Shrine, Tokyo.

So what did our curating this year do for us? Well first and foremost, it allowed experiences to stick in my head. Maybe it's early old age ADHD setting in or something, but I feel like I need visits to these houses of worship that are unusual and memorable, rather than just hitting up property after property with graveyards and pagodas and torii at every property entrance. Because for sure, there's plenty of that sort of stuff to go around.

What stuck with me this year? Well pretty much everything, from the hundreds or maybe thousands of maneki-neko (the waving cats that you see at some Japanese restaurants) to 500 unique statues of Buddhists in Kawagoe to a couple of hundred sake barrels decorated and offered to the spirits that inhabit the property today to walking through many, many donated vermilion torii (although not as many as at Kyoto's Fushimi Inari) and fishing for our own fortunes contained within miniature (and not real) red snappers. All I can really say about those sake barrels at Meiji Jingu Shrine is those are some lucky spirits. I hope a year's allotment lasts all 12 months.

And we also found a temple that goes through a ton of daikon radishes each day. That would be a place on a hill right alongside the Sumida River called Matsuchiyama Shoden. Walk into the property from pretty much any direction and you'll find buildings and lamps and ornaments decorated with full bags of cash and daikons of all size and color (although mostly golden). Both symbols are important to the temple although you have a much better chance at picking up a radish or two than finding a spare fortune or two lying around. 

Matsuchiyama Shoden. Radishes and bags of money.

What's the deal with the radishes? Apparently they are representative of our minds trapped in ignorance emanating poison and anger. By offering a daikon as sacrifice in front of the altar, then just like that the poison within us is apparently purged from the soul. Enter the main temple space and right there front and center before the altar is a pile of radishes. Where do people get all these radishes from? Well, they are for sale at various spots in the tiny, tiny temple property for 300 yen per radish. That's about two U.S. dollars in 2025.

Now, if we had realized this before taking off our shoes and trying to keep our socks dry all the way into the inside of the temple, we likely would have bought a radish or two so we could get the poison purged from our soul. Since we didn't do this, we ended up just gawking at the giant pile of veg and the incredible dragon on the ceiling of the temple. We often meet dragons when we are in Asia. This one was one of the best.

Radish temple. Worth the visit. And no, it doesn't appear that the temple recycles the daikons. Once it's bought and offered, it doesn't get moved back outside into the unsold radish boxes for more people to buy. Not sure what they do with all of them at the end of each day. I mean there are only so many footlong radishes one can eat, right? 

The best part about our temple and shrine visits this year wasn't the cats or the fish or the sake barrels or the statues in Kawagoe. It also was not (surprise, surprise) the giant radishes. Nothing that I've written above was the best part. The best part was the fire and the 47 masterless samurai who committed suicide over a blood oath. 

Although one of the 47 ended up better than the other 46. Or so I assume. Although I may be applying western values to my judgement here.

Close up of one of the 500 statues of the followers of Buddha at Kita-in Temple in Kawagoe. Beer or wine? 

It seems like most all countries or peoples out there around the world have a national epic or two that permeate through the centuries and provide a sense of national pride or commonality of purpose or history for their populations. These epics can have various forms. Some are written as poems or books; others are just folklore handed down orally from generation to generation, although I assume in today's day and age those are also written down somewhere.

Japan is no stranger to epic stories. One of their most famous is a tale of devotion, courage, betrayal, swordplay, pride, anger and revenge. And the best part is that's it's all true.

Here's the story.

In the year 1701, a young nobleman named Lord Asano Naganori was sent to the Imperial Court of Shōgun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi to learn court etiquette and protocol from one of the Court's tutors, Kira Yoshinaki. Apparently, Kira wasn't always the ideal teacher for every student. He had a bad habit of behaving like a bit of a bully when his students didn't show the expected level of reverence and our young Lord Asano fell into the not-showing-enough-respect category. After a couple of months of ill treatment from Kira, Asano snapped and attacked his tutor, leaving Kira with a wound on his face.

This was not good for Asano. The Shōgun got word of the whole situation and ordered Asano to commit suicide (or seppuku) the very day of the attack. Being an honorable lord, Asano did what he was commanded and killed himself. Aged 26. Gone. As were his family's land and standing and titles. All gone. All taken away.

Asano's act of aggression and suicide meant that the samurai who were tied to him no longer had a master to follow. In losing their master, they became rōnin, a term used to describe a masterless samurai. By tradition, rōnin were obligated to commit seppuku like their master. But these rōnin didn't. They disbanded and transformed their lives, becoming merchants or monks or (in the case of their leader, Ōishi Yoshitaka) a drunken debaucher. 

What does all this have to do with temples and shrines? Keep reading. I'm getting there.

Sengaku-ji Temple, Tokyo.

It was all an act. The 47 rōnin that appeared to have moved on with their lives after the death of their lord were doing nothing of the sort. They plotted revenge on Kira the day Asano died and kept working on a plan of deceit for almost two years so that the Shōgun would no longer suspect any sort of retribution was in the works.

Then on December 15, 1702, when everyone's guard was sufficiently down, the 47 rōnin gathered and made an assault on Kira's house. It was successful. Kira managed to escape his bedroom and hide in a hidden courtyard but he was discovered and when the rōnin found him, they cut off his head. They then took the decapitated head to Asano's grave on the grounds of Sengaku-ji Temple in tribute to their fallen master.

Got the temple connection, now? Good.

The murder of Kira didn't go any better for the ronin than it the attack on Kira did for Asano. All 47 rōnin were sentenced to commit seppuku for their dishonorable act. 46 ended up doing it, as young as teenagers and as old as late 70s, and were all buried next to their master at Sengaku-ji. And no, the 47th didn't refuse to kill himself; he was pardoned by the Shōgun. I'm not clear if the remaining one felt lucky or unlucky.

47 rōnin graves. The one with the incense burning in the top photograph is Ōishi Yoshitaka. 

Because of this story, this epic national tale, we had to visit Sengaku-ji. Not just to visit Asano, but to visit him, his wife and all 47 rōnin, who are all buried next to their lord in the cemetery inside the temple grounds. 

I believe it is a measure of the Japanese reverence for loyalty and honor that the seppuku deaths of both Asano and his 47 followers (OK...46) was accepted as a just punishment. They all committed some breach of honor against a peer or superior and therefore had to take their own lives. And they did. Without protest (ignoring the year and half gap between Asano's death and their revenge I guess). 

By the same token, the act of loyalty to avenge the death of their Lord (and look, is a little scratch on the cheek really punishable by death?) is revered to this day. They committed some terrible crime against honor but they did it in the most honorable way. At least that's my take.

Our visit to Sengaku-ji was stirring. Here we are in 2025, 300 plus years after all this happened and the very people who were the principal actors in this amazing story are still visited and respected. As a sign of offering today, you are supposed to purchase a bundle of incense sticks and place a few at each grave, although I guess when it's raining the ash becomes difficult to remove when it's mixed with water so we were requested to place our lit sticks of incense only at the four covered graves. We did as we were told.

A stone and plum tree at Sengaku-ji. Both allegedly stained with the blood of Asano Naganori when he killed himself.

Sengaku-ji wasn't the best temple we visited this year.

There is a buddhist temple on the east side of Tokyo called Fukagawa Fudō-dō where the monks in residence perform a loud and smoky and intense fire ritual. It's both primitive and sophisticated and intense and uplifting and cleansing all at the same time. And they perform this thing five times each day. Every day.

Get to the Fukagawa Fudō-dō on the odd numbered hours between 9 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon and you can witness this ceremony. No reservations, no fee, no questions, no exclusions and no shoes. Just walk in off the street and spend about 30 minutes with some buddhist monks and a whole lot of fire.

Here's how it works. And because it all took place inside the temple...no pictures. 

Shoes off. Place them in a bag. Walk to an empty spot on the tiered seating areas and sit down. What you'll be looking at if you have a relatively clear view of the main temple space is an altar on a stage in front of an empty space (that's where they will burn stuff) backed by an enormous black-lacquered wood wall with gold decorative accents. The wood wall has a series of very shallow shelves upon which are standing a series of thin pieces of wood decorated with kanji writing.

Towards the front of the stage you'll notice a couple of very, very large drums. I'd guess about two to three feet in diameter and maybe five to six feet deep. The drums are laid on their sides with the massive drum heads facing the audience. They aren't the only drums on the stage, but they are certainly the most obvious and noticeable. 

The street side approach to Fukagawa Fudō-dō. This is NOT the pit for the fire ritual.

At the top of the hour, the lights in the temple dim and the music starts. Gongs. Clanging. Some sort of strange horns that honestly looked like gourds in mesh nets. I'm not confident that my description of these last instruments isn't spot on by the way. The players are monks and they process across the stage in different colored robes which seem to be related to the seniority of the monks. No drums. Not yet. Let's wait for the fire before we get to the drums. 

The flames are lit and the ceremony builds. The sticks with kanji writing are taken down from the black wall and passed over the flames each in its turn by a monk who holds his sleeve carefully back from the flames. Safety is important. Incantations and chanting accompany the ritual as it builds. This is a mystical, mysterious act, made all the more exotic to us because if the monks were speaking in Japanese, we certainly couldn't understand it. It was like speaking in tongues to us, although the rest of our fellow spectators may have understood more. Or everything.

Then the drums start. I have never seen drums played like I heard and saw in that temple. The young monks braced themselves at what seemed like a 45 degree angle just before they started pounding on those skins, as if the bounce back from the mallets they were using would knock them over. And who knows, it might. With the flames dancing as high as they were allowed making the smoky-smelling space even smokier, those drums were hit hard. And it mattered. 

As the flames died down, the audience was invited to proceed up to the embers in the fire pit and hand their bags or whatever else they would like the monks to purify above the still hot ashes. One dude had his iPhone purified; another handed some coins over. What good this does is beyond me but it's part of the thing and the ritual is important.

After the purification and a quick speech from one of the monks (again...in Japanese), we filed back out into the rain.

Lighted, individually-dedicated, miniature crystal buddhas in the corridor wrapping the main hall of Fukagawa Fudō-dō.

When I was planning this trip to Japan, I had a notion to get to some traditional Japanese theater. I debated and flirted with both kabuki and bunraku before dismissing both as either too long or creepy (it's the puppets in the bunraku) or both, and made worse by the fact that either performance was completely in Japanese. 

Honestly, I can't imagine either being better than the fire ritual we witnessed at Fukagawa Fudō-dō. This was a legitimately professional and passionate and intense and intimate spectacle and it was concise and pretty much free. It was definitely the best thing we experienced at any temple or shrine we visited on this trip and it was the best performance of any sort that we found in eight days in Tokyo. 

And it's "pretty much free" because you should (and we did) give some offering to the temple as part of the ritual of watching this spectacle. 

I imagine our next trip to Japan will feature more temples and shrines. I think our idea to pick some places that are more relevant to us than a likely gorgeous and well maintained series of spiritual buildings with little to set one apart from the other was a smart one. We'll have to remember this and work similarly hard with some temples outside of the metropolitan Tokyo area on our next visit. After all, it worked so well this year. I am sure there are others out there which will amaze and excite us the way some of these did this year.

And next time, I'm spending a couple of hundred yen and buying a radish. Who knows...I might need some poison purged from my body and I clearly missed my shot this year.

One last rōnin graves picture, with glipses of modern Tokyo beyond. What would they think of this place?