Tokyo

Ok, so now that I know Japanese, everything from 'hello' to 'bye' (some exceptions being the words in between), the city does not look so alien anymore! Surprisingly, it has a way of charming you with its strangeness. This would not work with the 'ultra-mod-hep-city' facade for someone who has been to London or NYC but there is more to Tokyo than that and to find that, you have to find your way through the forest!



This is the entrance to the Meiji forest, which is home to Tokyo's largest shrine. Now when I heard shrine, I thought it would be a statue of Buddha or something but actually most of the Japanese follow some other religion. So the things I saw were quite new, and weird (in keeping with Japan's tradition of being weird) but pretty in its own way.

I think you can see the path that leads to the shrine, here are the details - imagine a wide, very wide path made of gravel... there are no modern roads here. Leaves strewn around like the ones in Central Park in autumn (I haven't seen that myself but hear from reliable sources that they look pretty amazing, hence the comparison) and huge, huge trees all around you which go up to 20-30 m in height and then get tangled amongst each other to block out the view of the sky. Rays of light still make their way to the ground through the windows of error in the chaotic mesh above.



When it gets dark, these pretty lamps light up and help you on your way to the center of the forest. Once can't see the bulbs in these lamps and so it is pretty easy to imagine a candle burning inside, which makes you feel that you are far away from technology, close to nature and going back in time.



The entrance to the actual shrine is huge, completely made of wood. This must have been built in time when there was no concrete, yet the symmetry so right, the finishing so smooth and the architecture so amazing and different - you always end up praising ancient knowledge and wisdom. I remember seeing such structures in Kung-Fu movies, like the Chambers of Shaolin, when I was a kid. From the movies it seemed that every kid's life revolved around Kung-Fu, his master and his temple. Maybe this was the Japanese equivalent of the Gurukul system.



The shrine itself was just a building in which people clapped their hands twice, then bowed before something which looked to me like a stack of wood. There was a big courtyard in the middle with birds flying around. Again, all made of wood and very pretty.



There is a tree with a wall around it, on which you can hang small tablets of wood with your prayers written on it. Yes, the small brown things you see are pieces of wood, 5" by 3" with someone asking for happiness, someone for success, someone for world peace and numerous other Japanese prayers that I could not read. I put one up there as well :). Hope it comes true!

With that done, there's nothing more left for you to do, so I started on my way out. After walking for 20 min, I came out at the Shibuya station, which is supposed to be the busiest crossing in the world (I think it really is)...



...and helicopters and bullet trains around you. Welcome back to Tokyo!