Hisako in Asakusa

Front Gate at Senso-ji

Kappa

In the middle of my favorite foods at the plastic food shop.

Chanko nabe cooking

Ready to eat

It's ready

In front of the Kabuki Theatre

Old Edo

Today we visited Ryogoku and Asakusa.  First we went to Asakusa.  When we got there we went to temple shopping street.  We tried lots of things like mochi on a stick and fried manjiu.  The temple was very beautiful.  There were two gods as guards at the entrance gate.  The doors where painted with shiny black lacquer with golden knockers.  And in the garden were pretty maple trees and koi.
After visiting the temple we headed to Kappabashi-dori. A kappa is a Japanese legend.  One of the characters that live under water and pulls swimmers legs; Aaah!  People say that the kappa has a plate on top of his head that he has to keep wet because if it gets wet it will die.  Kappabashi-dori Is known as kitchen street where people sell dishes knives and realistic plastic food for restaurants to use in their front window so people can see what they serve.
When we finished browsing Kappabashi-dori we rode a train to Ryogoku, a sumo area.  When we got off the train the first thing we saw was sumo wrestler.  Paintings of sumo stars and their hand prints and height.  Once we got out of the station we went to a sumo shop where they had T-shirts, postcards, wash cloths, giant Geta a woven sandals and even sumo wrestler shaped tops!  After we left the shop we headed to a chanko nabe restaurant.  Chanko nabe is a soup with meat often chicken and vegetables that sumo wrestlers eat.  The sumo wrestlers eat twice a day. Chanko nabe is the only food the wrestlers eat other than rice and sometimes fish.
When the waitress brought the chankonabe she put it on top of of a flame  to boil.  When it was cooked through, we dug in.  It was delicious!  It was sort of rich and different than other things I had eaten so far in Japan.
After we finished looking at sumo things we went to the Edo museum.  It was amazing!   There  were life sized models of old Edo. Edo is what Tokyo used to be called.  There were even models small enough for me to live in!  They also had things to do like you could use a thing that fire men used to use to put out fires, two heavy barrels on a yoke that you could try to lift. I really like the Edo museum because it was sort of like you were a part of the story instead of just reading a lot and looking at pictures.   I never knew history could be so fun!
Today we had a lot of fun.  Here are some things that I would suggest doing if you are in the area.
1.  Edo museum
2.  Kappabashi-dori  and
3. Sensoji the temple because it is beautiful.