Japan – Day 8 and 9: Tokyo is no longer scared of Godzilla. They now know James.
More on the title later.
Yesterday, conference ended. We were sad. We said goodbye to the kids, the missionaries, the wonderful food. Oh the food….
We got a bus to the airport, LOOK! PEOPLE WHO WILL HURT ME SHORTLY. ASLEEP.

We said goodbye to the other missionaries again, sat in the airport for a few hours, said goodbye to the same missionaries who happened to be at the same departure gate, and got on our plane south, out of Hokkaido. We arrived at the guest house last night, and slept a glorious sleep. So yesterday was pretty much travel and tears.
We are now in TOKYO.
Its a big place. With a really complicated train and subway network:
Getting from the bottom left of that map to the top right takes about 7 trains. 7! Thats more than you can get in the entirety of northern ireland!
Anyway, we’ve done a few things today, from walking through Tokyo to a decent sized park:
- <Image removed by request from someone who thinks they look like a house but actually doesn’t. Silly person who shall remain nameless.>
- Walking. Its what we do. Go walking.




We then went on a water taxi over to the district where a Buddhist temple is to see it.

The Buddhist temple has a street leading up to it covered in shops selling what can only be described as Touristy things. It was incredibly busy, but there were virtually no queues in any of the shops…

Then we arrived at the temple. We did not like the temple. I took many photos, but I think describing it would be better.
The building is quite large, about the size of a regular church back home, red and black in traditional japanese structure, and a set of steps going up to the main entrance. Outside are 2 long buildings with windows for people to sell things from, like fortunes and possibly specific prayers. Theres also a pit of burning something, that people were rubbing the smell on themselves. There were many statues of Buddha and various other statues scattered around the building.
Upon reaching the temple itself you’re pretty much struck by one thing. The sound of money rattling down into the offering system. It is nonstop, and drowns out the noise from the throng of people in the quite large outer chamber room. The inner room appeared to be quieter but much more exclusive.. One team member compared it to the sound of slot machines in Vegas. Inside the temple itself was another stall selling things, like those outside.
We did not feel comfortable.
Some of us felt the urge to leave immediately. Some felt the urge to tell them what we believe, but couldn’t. Others just felt a bit sick. Personally I took one step inside and left immediately. I don’t know why, I just did not continue into the building, even though I’d been taking a lot of photos of everything. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to pass any further in after seeing the stall inside the temple. It was all a disconcerting experience for all of us I think.
So much so that James did try to use the right vending machine out of these 2 while it was like this:

He got his water. After the guy handed it to him, with his change.
After this (and buying some of the souvenirs some of you lovely people will be getting from us) we decided to pop over to the Electric Town. Or, as it has been put, “That place Dave will like”.
They were pretty correct with that statement, though the prices are weird here, Sony is more expensive, Apple is cheaper. Very Strange. Without the ridiculous markup in the UK, a macbook air is actually a reasonable price.
We then had Chinese food and came back tot he guest house. We are now in bed. Well, by the time anyone gets tot his point I will be.
π
Dave – James also broke a plate. Hence the title. I forgot to put that in there.