After completing my first week filled with research, meetings, presentations, cranes and excavators, it was time for some exploring! One of my colleagues in the Compliance Planning and Administration Group, Kodama-san, offered to join me during my weekend of adventures so we decided to visit Asakusa. We began by visiting Senso-ji, Tokyo’s oldest Buddhist temple.
Leading up to the temple is Nakamise Dori, a shopping street filled with traditional food and souvenir shops. The view from the beginning of this street is beautiful, it is full of vibrant colors and many people shopping and eating. Once you finally make your way down the street you arrive to the magnificent Senso-ji temple. Senso-ji temple was definitely the most beautiful temple I saw during my stay in Tokyo and I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Tokyo.
Adjacent to the temple is a beautiful five-story pagoda. While here, my wonderful tour guide informed me that the two major religions in Japan were Buddhism and Shintoism. Kodama-san also gave me a tip for differentiating between the Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines: shrines have a torii (Japanese gates) at the entrances, while temples do not. This piece of information was very useful for my entire trip, since shrines and temples are everywhere in Japan.
After visiting Senso-ji, we had Okonomiyaki for lunch. Okonomiyaki is similar to a pancake except it includes ingredients not usually seen in pancakes.
The one I ate was filled with egg, pork, cabbage, and other delicious ingredients. It is grilled and then topped with mayonnaise, a thick sweet sauce, aonori (seaweed flakes) and katsuobushi (fish flakes).
After lunch, Yoshikawa-san (a member of the Legal Group) joined us as we made our way to Tokyo Skytree.
Tokyo Skytree is an observation tower that reaches a height of 2,080 feet (634 meters) making it the tallest tower in the world. Simply looking at this tower from afar was breathtaking, but the view from the top was even better.
Connected to the tower is a shopping mall filled with boutique stores and restaurants, this is where we decided to have dinner.
For dinner, Honsho-san and Kikui-san from the Legal Group joined us as we had tsukemen (dipping noodles).
Dinner was a great way to end a day filled of exploring. We all continued to get to know each other and everyone was impressed at how quick I was getting the hang of using chopsticks.
By the end of my internship, I was surely going to be a chopstick expert!