Day 1: A Repeat of Last Year!

Note: day 0-3 were written at the same time, so forgive me if there is accidental foreshadowing etc.

Like last year, I messed up my sleep schedule. I went to bed at 9 PM and woke up at 6 AM when I'm supposed to be staying up until 6 AM...

At least until the time changes, my overall schedule will look something like

• Sleep: between 4 and 6 AM until sometime between 11 AM and 1 PM depending on work schedule
• Determine what I am doing for the day and do that, any chores, and blogging, gaming etc. until I need to work
• Work : Start between 8 and 10 PM depending on what I've got going on Actually kind of normal I think for like 3rd shift workers or whatever so I know I can manage it. Well, especially since I've already done it once.

Since I was already up, I decided I should make the most of the day. I had thought about things I had done last year and I felt that the first day last year was a pretty good mix of different cultural explorations. It has the shrines and historic sites, but also took me through the electric city of Akihabara itself.

With that in mind, I headed towards Yanaka. I didn't actually go to Yanaka proper this time at all. I stopped by Suwa-Jinja, a temple that I went to last time. Mostly for the memes since the only photo I took was actually of the stairs outside. Last year, the reason I had done so was because the stairs themselves had a place on Google Maps and had reviews, but I looked and it seems like it was removed unfortunately.

Is that litter in my pristine Japan???

The main shrine was nice but there was a family taking some kind of formal photos so I didn't dwell too long.

Rather than follow the same route I had gone on exactly in the past, I opted to visit new places along the way. One new stop was Tennōji Temple. This temple was apparently constructed in the 1200s and had a cool Buddha statue that was created in 1690.

I walked around Yanaka and made my way towards Ueno. Ueno Park is nice and has lots of things to do adjacent, such as the science museum, zoo, etc. so I headed there without any particular plans. Luckily though, there was actually an event happening!

I looked it up later, and it seems I caught the tail end of the Tokyo Edo Week celebration, which celebrates Tokyo's roots as "Edo", which it had been called before the capital had been moved. The theme this time was Japanese materials, but that didn't mean much to me peresonally since I was just there for food! After browsing a few stalls, I settled on a skewer of roasted dango, mitarashi flavored since that's the kind I prefer.

I guess typically you take a photo before eating any of it...

I'm pretty sure I was already over my 10k steps but generally feeling alright so I continued on towards Akihabara.

Or, I would have if I didn't see another cool-looking temple to stop at. So I diverted from the path I had in my head and made my way to Yushima Tenmangū. I'm not totally sure, but I think this might be the oldest I've stopped at yet since it was established in 458. I had planned to get a goshuin from the temple while I was there but then immediately realized I hadn't planned or packed as well as I had thought. I had left both my stamp book and my goshuincho in Seattle.

In case you need a quick recap, a goshuin is a special stamp/seal that you can get at many Buddhist temples to commemorate the visit. I had only learned about it at the end of my last trip, so hadn't previously collected many so decided I'd just start a new one for this trip (and not forget next time!).

This guide talks about all of the specific parts that go into the seal. The majority of the seal will be the same no matter when you recieve it, but the date portion will change. Looking at mine above, you can see that the writing on the very left spells out the date. At the bottom we have 十月十四日 which is just the Kanji for October 14 (10th month 14th day). Interestingly, the year listed at the top of the left hand text is actually based on the Japanese era system which changes when the emperor changes. Meaning that it doesn't say 2024, but rather "6th year of the Reiwa era".

After my detour, I finally did actually make it to Akihabara. I was on a mission to do some shopping for some anime goods!

I explored a few stores but eventually my feet were too sore to keep going and my morale was running out. I picked up some KFC so that I could get the limited-time Genshin collaboration merch, and headed home.

All in all, a long day of exploring. My FitBit said I walked 21,500 steps which is a lot for me. That's like an average week of steps for me normally LOL Below is the map of the walking route I took. I also have tried to show how it compares to the similar path from last year in fainter blue. Overall, a similar vibe but with new discoveries!