by joostay
A colourful children’s procession with wishes for happiness and health
Categories: Tokyo Days • Tags: asia, ceremony, festival, japan, japanese, justin egli, photography, shrine, temple, tokyo, travel, travel writer
by joostay
Going Deeper Underground: Exploring the Tokyo temple with a dark secret What was I doing last Sunday morning I hear you ask? No, I wasn’t writhing about in my bed hungover. Guess again. Church? No, I wasn’t at church either – but I guess you could say I was having a religious experience of sorts, exploring the secret underground tunnel of a temple nestled deep in the Tokyo suburbs. This is a tunnel so secret that not even some of […]
Categories: Art Music & Culture, Tokyo Days • Tags: blog, Denentoshi, Gyokushin Mitsuin, ikimasho, japan, japanese, justin egli, religion, religious, shrine, suburbia, suburbs, Tamagawa Daishi, temple, tokyo, unique, unusual, urban, utako-Tamagawa, weird
by joostay
No one travels Along this way but I, This autumn evening.
Categories: Tokyo Days • Tags: asia, haiku, japan, shrine, temple, tokyo, tokyo tower, zojoji
by joostay
Brush past spider webs and dusty shrines and immerse yourself in Tokyo’s best kept secret. As I stand motionless in a trance watching a spider hypnotically spin its web I’m hit by an odd sensation. Absolute nothingness. I can’t hear Tokyo. I close my eyes and instead feel the sound of water splashing against rocks and nature breathing peacefully. Not to sound like a hippy, but Todoroki truly is a special place. It’s the only natural gorge left in Tokyo, […]
Categories: Tokyo Days • Tags: commute, gorge, hiking, japan, metro, nature, shrine, station, subway, temple, todoroki, tokyo, train, travel, valley, Zen
by joostay
Considering becoming a corpse in Japan? Here’s a convenient place to park your body. Dying is pretty low down on most people’s list of priorities. Let’s face it, it’s not much fun and everyone is running around crying and stuff. It’s not a happy occasion. Saying that, it happens to us all – and undertakers will never be out of business. There are graveyards scattered all over Tokyo. I pass one particular one on my way to work some days […]
Categories: Art Music & Culture, Bizarre/Unique, Tokyo Days • Tags: asia, bizarre, burial, corpse, culture, dead, death, festival, funeral, guidebook, inaka, japan, religion, shinto, shrine, south east asia, tokyo, travel, urban, weird
by joostay
Teaching purity and peace, for one day only. The Shinto shrine that shares its grounds with a kindergarten. On Tuesday I am the guy on call. If someone gets sick, I get a phonecall. On Monday night it came at 9pm, the apologetic voice of my boss asking (telling) me to go sub at a school Id never been to before the next day. After initially declaring him a bastard, I soon warmed to the idea when I realised it’d […]
Categories: Kindergarten Life, Tokyo Days • Tags: asia, culture, english, gaijin, guidebook, japan, kindergarten, shinto, shrine, south east asia, teaching, torii, train, travel, urban
