Kameido Tenjin Shrine

Happy Easter Season in the station mall.

 We went to Gram's favourite Yoshinoya for breakfast.

 Then we went out to Kinshicho to find the wisteria shrine.

 This big golden doughnut is called "Echo".

 Cats and little wiggly dudes. I like the little Flip Flap sprout on the right.

 This little statue was based off a child's drawing.

 It's a little hard to see, but it's called "I want to fly in the big open sky".

 The iconic wisteria and red bridge.

 This is the first place that we thought was Kameido Tenjin Shrine. It turned out to just be a gift shop.

 The koi were nice though.

 The kame in Kameido means turtle, so there are some turtle goods, like this file folder.

 Cat and shiba coin purses and some cat kerchiefs.

 As we continued to look for Kameido Shrine, we wandered onto a shopping street full of thrift stores. I saw this shirt with cats on it.

"New and fan and always"

"Neuen stop neuen whateuen"

 There were also several street performers.

 This street had carp streamers crisscrossing all the way down.

 This other second hand clothing store had some great shirts. There was a rack of them for only 100 yen each! But they weren't all the right size.

"This is good start and flying sky"

"Very much is indeed new freeing individually too"

 "The good day of the weather wants to go to the town. 

So this is who la(?) and this is all iknow... holiday."

 I bought this blooming shirt. It is vory nico.

 frog

 We had a late lunch at this Thai and Indian restaurant. Curry and naan.

 And also pad thai.

 Here's a man playing the biwa.

 These two women played a kazoo trumpet and a washboard.

 Here's the second shrine we went to, the Kameido Katori Shrine. It was not the Kameido Tenjin Shrine. We realized it wasn't the one because it didn't have any wisteria.

 It did have this statue to the Kameido Daikon, a major product of the area.

 And it had this good luck rock.

 Here are two of the seven lucky gods. On the left is Daikokuten, the patron of cooks, farmers and bakers. He holds his mallet of fortune and has a bale of rice, signifying plentiful food. On his right is Ebisu, the patron of fishermen. You can wash the statues and the gods might grant you good luck.

 A display of samurai armour.

 Finally, we found Kameido Tenjin Shrine, which was much bigger that the previous places.

 A traditional dance performance.

 There's the wisteria!

 There really was a lot. And it was incredibly crowded.

 There's the red bridge that was on the street tile.

 Everyone's trying to get selfies with the hanging flowers.

 And so did we.

 There were some turtles swimming with the koi.

 Look at that octopus graphic. He's sweatin' it out.

 You can tell where people rub this bull for luck.

 I like that happy little dude, cheering for grandma's surgery to go well.

 This wood carving mural was on a wall at the station.

 Our way back took us past Akihabara, so we stopped and walked around there a bit too.

 There was a big arcade setup at the Bellesalle building.

 We stopped at another clothing shop and I found this shirt.

 And then we bought a bag of little panda yaki.

 Even the bag was cute!

Since we had a late lunch and were getting back late, we just bought some instant noodles at the drug store for dinner.

 This cheap, low-quality flavour is nice once in a while too.