Disneyland for grannies

As I’ve said before, we live in a part of Tokyo called Sugamo.

Sugamo is known as “Harajuku (or Disneyland) for the old ladies”. Why? Well, not far from us there is a temple (Togenuki – jizou) that is dedicated to healing of physical suffering. The grannies come here in herds to get rid of pains in their backs, knees and whatever.

Now, clever entrepreneurs have seized the opportunity to make some money on the oldies. The whole street up to the temple (and beyond!) is full of stores and stands, offering stuff that any old lady would want. Like tea, pickles, granny clothes, hats or wigs, bright red underwear (I’ll explain another time), fortune-telling and so on. It’s Disneyland, see?

Sundays are the best/worst. It gets packed. Moreover, there is a special festival on everyday that contains a 4 (that is 4th, 14th and 24th in any month)..... And when that coincides with a Sunday it turns into this:


This is 30 meters from our door...

Last Sunday we made a little trip to the area around Asakusa in northern Tokyo. There’s a new tower under construction there called Tokyo Sky Tree. It’s gonna be the highest building in Japan (North East Asia?) with a height of about 630 meters. Not as high as Burj Dubai but still pretty impressive considering the earthquakes we have here. Also, we have special interest because it’s Natsuko’s colleges at Nikken Sekkei that designed it.

There are almost no buildings this size around it. It's gonna look huge! See the link to Nikken Sekkei above for images.

Ok, that’s it.
Take care!