In the Sensoji jinja compound there are many buildings, small and big temples, there is always a lot of people visiting and praying even in the small temples. All Asakusa area is full of turists, and around temples especially. This  was my first visit in Winter 05 and was raining, shame for the grey mood, but the whole area is very nice and interesting.

Monument, usually, are celebration of important people, heroes or significant events in history. But why not celebrate somthing that changed life of millions of youngsters and less young people all over the word: the walkman and his headphone, something that become a philosophy of life.

Forgive me but I forgot to look for the author of this pop sculpture, if not splendid, is amusing and fun. I found this monument in Shinagawa, a new area of Tokyo, is on claimed land, it was sea and the industrious Japanese people decided to strech their town into the see, they build a wonderfull modern area with canal and nice view on the ocean.

Do you like it?

Also in Spporo, bigger town in Okkaido, there is a Tower, one of local landmarks, like the Tokyo Tower is lit nicely. On the main road there is a great garden and in winter, for the Christmas festivity, there is a great show of lights, in different shapes and forms, decorating trees and many are just luminous sculptures, a lot of people gather there to watch this great display and take photographs, even if it's very cold and a lot of a lot of snow cover the whole town. Is a social occasion and Japanese people like to partecipate at gathering and love contemplation, simple pleasures in life! I love it.

This is a side building housing a big bell, the green thing inside the window. The bell is used in buddist ceremonies by the priest. Is a very nice architecture, very clean, probably re-build not too long ago. in Japan traditional architecture is all made with wood structure, so after a certain number of years is not possible to restore it, must be rebuilt, keeping all parts that are not damaged, inside furnishing and architectural decorations. The courtyard is big and on the side of it there is a nice small garden very well kept. In the other picture we can see the innter temple, the altar with a statue of Lord Buddha and other accessories for rituals, like a big black bell on the left of the altar, tha wooden box on the floor in front of the altar is the Saisenbako, is an offertory box and people throw money into it before they says a prayer. 

In December 2005 I went for the first time to Japan in winter, that day was a very sunny but extremely and windy day, for that reason the sky was deeply blue (with a bit of help from a polarizing filter). This Temple is in Koriyama, a big town north of Tokyo on the Shinkansen (fast train) line half way to Okkaido. In this town there are very few old buildings, few Jinja, is all modern or just a bit old, modern urbanization devoured everything. Very little personality in the landscape. Just temple and graveyards are tokens of a great past with an incredible rich culture and art, even in the architectural styles. Probably only Kyoto has mantained the splendour of the past, in fact it was the ancient capital of Japan.