Day 10 – Tokyo in Color
So, I had a strange experience this morning of the
ABD. People had written about having breakfast upstairs at one of the restaurants at the Peninsula Tokyo, but we only had the option of the restaurant on the first floor, or a tiny buffet in the basement. I went down there this day, and was told there was no room for me, that there’d be at least a 20-minute wait for me to be seated! While I wasn’t exactly running late, I didn’t have time to wait 20 minutes or more to start my breakfast, and I certainly didn’t have time to go up to the actual restaurant on the main floor at this point and order off the menu. I tried to find anyone from our group to see if I could share a table, and only found one couple, but they were at a teeny, tiny round table that really didn’t have room for the 2 of them let alone a third person. Fortunately, the husband noticed that there were a couple of upholstered chairs just outside the other end of the room, with a small coffee table in front of them, and asked the person not seating me if I could sit there. The server didn’t seem thrilled with the idea, but agreed, and set me up there. “Crisis” averted! But I’ve *never* had a buffet tell me I couldn’t be seated! Something to keep in mind going forward, I guess!
The weather this morning was a HUGE improvement over the previous day. It was a bit overcast (and a tad windy at one point) and nowhere near as HOT as it had been the day before. Thank goodness!
Our first stop of the morning was at the Meiji Jingu Shrine, which had a gorgeous, lush park. We walked through a beautifully green area towards our first goal, this beautiful, non-red Torii Gate.
We saw workers sweeping up leaves using these really interesting brooms.
Outside the Gate were these huge walls of barrels. One side had painted sake barrels, and the other had wine casks, both of which were offerings to “the divine enshrined souls” of Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shōken.
After the requisite picture taking, we headed into the shrine. We stopped at the designated area to wash first, and then had some time to wander around the grounds.
We were given a time to meet up if we were interested in an activity, which was going inside one of the buildings and watching a traditional Kagura ceremony. Some people chose not to participate, but those of us who wanted to went in with Tomomi, while the others hung with James. We waited a while, and eventually were led into the area where the ceremony would take place. We were sat on the floor on bamboo mats. No photos were allowed inside this area.
We had an explanation from one of the younger monks before it all started, so that we would understand what we were watching. The head monk had beautiful robes and a headdress, and went through the blessings. Then two women in beautiful outfits came out and performed a traditional dance. It was all fascinating to me. Tomomi had an Ema, or wooden plaque, that had some writing on it along with “
Adventures by Disney”. The Ema was blessed as a part of the ceremony, to provide us with safe travels. Tomomi was going to collect all of the Emas for all the departures, and bring them back to the Shrine to be burned at New Year's.
After the ceremony, we headed back outside to meet up with the rest of our group and head back out to the parking lot. As we were walking out, a sea of women were walking in. James surmised that there was some sort of convention meeting there, as we passed what looked like a registration table. (They also had what appeared to be some sort of nametags on.) We also noticed a lot of helicopters overhead, and guessed that that had something to do with Trump being in town. (The women at the shrine did not appear to have anything to do with that).
Continued in next post.