As our trip to Tokyo was coming to a close  the Asakusa Sensoji Temple was at the top of our list for our last day in the city, and we began our venture to the other side of Tokyo.

Living in Korea, I’ve seen a number of palaces and temples so I thought I knew what to expect, however, the Japanese temples are completely different from those in Korea. For one the color scheme is much warmer. Korean palaces have a cooler scheme made up of mostly greens and blues while the Asakusa Temple was mostly red and black and looked much more like what you would imagine a temple in Asia to look like. Something about it just seemed more sacred, though I couldn’t quite pinpoint why.

I was excited and surprised to see a long market pathway leading us to the temple. I love a good market. It was mostly touristy items and souvenirs along with a few snack shops thrown in. We stopped occasionally to look at various items, but our goal was to see the temple. We arrived later in the afternoon and were lucky to be seeing it right at dusk. The lights began to turn on right as we were arriving making it really quite magical.

One of the most memorable parts of visiting the temple was a small area to get your fortune. This was especially exciting to see as it was the start of the Chinese New Year. They had instructions set out in English and the process began.

We followed the directions, shaking a metal box until a wooden stick came out. Then we had to match the Japanese characters from the sick to a little box in the wall. When you find the box, you open the drawer, retrieve your fortune, and replace the stick in the metal box.

It was fun to see your fortune right as the new year began, and have an idea of what was to come for the year ahead and life in general. Luckily, none of the four of us received a “bad” fortune, in which case we would have had to fold it and tie it to a stand near the temple. It was a cool and interesting experience and having a little wisdom for the future never hurts.

With this visit to the temple, we ended our time in Tokyo. It was such an incredible weekend, and  it’s always exciting to be immersed a new city and culture. I’m definitely looking forward to another trip at some point while living in Asia.