Day 315: ¥5

Tokyo, Japan

At noon today, I met up with Akie and moved in from the hostel to her place. Akie lived in a cool shared house with 8 other people. The interior has a good vibe with it’s modern design. I was quickly introduced to a bunch of Akie’s housemates. Two of whom I would later on have dinner with in the evening.

After catching up with Akie and had a homemade lunch of Japanese riceballs, we went out to the famous neighboring district of Asakusa.

Asakusa is a wild place! Although it may be a tourist trap with it’s street lined up with stalls selling traditional cooking wares to cat statues to fake geisha wig, Asakusa is also a free or cheap food sample galore.

We reached the main temple of Asakusa, Sensoji, just in time to catch the ending of a Kanto Matsuri celebration.

Inside the temple, Akie showed me the how-to’s: getting oneself smoked up with the incense, throwing the 5 yens in succession into the donation trays, bowing for prayer and then clapping the hands twice to end it.

Why the 5 yen? Five in Japanese is “Go”. “Go Yen” phonetically sounds like “Goen” which means “good luck.” So throwing 5 yens in succession will bring repeated good luck.

In the evening, Akie, Sayaka, Sedna and I went to a restaurant nearby to have Mongja, Okonomiyaki and Teppanyaki. I got a chance to be the chef of the day. Following the instruction posted on the wall, I went ahead and fix us our Mongja and Okonomiyaki. While I realized later on that I had had Okonomiyaki in NYC, it was no where as good as half the experience is to make it oneself.