Every year my family likes to kick off the Christmas shopping season with a trip to the old-fashioned city of Kawagoe. Located less than an hour north of Tokyo by train, there's no better place to get unique gifts with that exotic Land of the Rising Sun flavor for everyone on your holiday shopping list. And it beats waiting in line on Black Friday hands down.
What makes Kawagoe so special is its traditional Japanese charm and atmospheric Edo-style architecture that looks like a throwback to bygone eras. This charm is not so apparent at first. Upon emerging from Hon-Kawagoe Station, the city looks plain enough. Indeed, the first thing we encountered was a huge bicycle parking lot. These are a common sight in Japan's urban areas, where many people choose not to own cars due to the excellent public transportation.
But as you walk away from the train station, it feels like moving backwards through time as the modern gives way to the past. After only a few minutes we came to an impressive temple, where we stopped for a bit to enjoy the peace and quiet.
Off to one side of the temple grounds I paused to take in this sad little memorial, bedecked with children's toys and stuffed animals:
My wife explained this was a place to pray for the souls of babies lost through abortion. As I watched, a couple women came up and stood before it in silent contemplation, heads bowed. We quickly moved on, heading back out to the busy street.
The Streets
Everything of interest can be found on either side of the main road through town. Our strategy was simple: walk down one side of the street until reaching its end, cross to the opposite side, and then return the other way, stopping at any place that caught our eye as we went.
Here you can see how the architecture of the buildings is changing around us as we walk deeper into the city. Note the elderly couple being carried across the street in a rickshaw. Now that's something you don't see every day!
We got a chance to see another rickshaw up close, this one parked outside a restaurant and apparently being used to entice diners:
The Shops
The interiors of the stores themselves proved no less fascinating. We found shelves filled with all manner of traditional curios, a cornucopia to make Japanophiles swoon in delight.
My absolute favorite was a tiny shop selling a variety of handmade crafts, including gorgeous Christmas decorations like something out of the Nutcracker ballet (and yes, there was a whole shelf full of nutcracker figurines too). We made sure to pick up a nice brass angel for our Christmas tree to commemorate this year's visit.
The Studio Ghibli shop was a close runner-up. Any fan of Japanese anime would feel right at home in here, amongst souvenirs of such classic movies as My Neighbour Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away. The shop's amazing decor simply made the experience that much more immersive and Ghibli-esque.
The Food
Walking around from shop to shop (they are quite spread out over a considerable distance) makes for hungry shoppers. Luckily, plenty of street vendors offered tasty Japanese snacks to tide us over until dinner time.
Our first pit stop included barbecued yakitori (skewers of meat & onion), enjoyed at outdoor tables kept warm with kerosene heaters.
Later on we waited in a long line to try some dango. Dango is hard to describe: it's made from a kind of rice flour that forms a soft, chewy blob of goodness. By itself it doesn't have much flavor, so sauces are an important component of any dango. The ones we had were smothered in a delicious sweet miso paste.
The Night Lights
After night falls, Kawagoe acquires a whole new atmosphere. Unlike Tokyo, everything closes early here (we even had trouble finding somewhere to eat dinner after 7 pm) so the streets empty out a bit. After the hustle and bustle of crowded shops earlier in the day, it was a marked relief to enjoy the relative tranquility of the evening.
And at night the city comes alive with lights. Weighed down with bags of Christmas gifts, we took our time strolling back to the train station, pausing a few times to take in the sights.
A small park jutting off from the main road offered this wonderful display, made mostly from recycled plastic drink bottles:
These large buildings in the center of town looked particularly impressive all lit up. I assume they are some sort of government buildings (though I don't know for sure), leftover from the era when Japan was first opening itself up to Western influence:
Another park, not to be outdone by the first one we stopped at, attracted visitors with a lovely nature exhibit:
We arrived back at the train station around 9 pm, tired but happy and eager to return home with our spoils. Thus ended another successful day trip to Japan's cherished past.
Links for more info
Previous entries in my Japan Diary series:
- Hanging out with the ghosts of GeGeGe no Kitaro
- Strolling around Showa Kinen Park
- A Kawasaki Halloween
Kawagoe tourist information: http://www.koedo.or.jp/foreign/english/
CNN travel article on Kawagoe: http://travel.cnn.com/tokyo/visit/kawagoe-most-japanese-destination-all-957760/
Kawagoe travel guide (the warehouse district is the part of the city we visited): http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e6500.html
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Image credits: all images in this post are photographs taken on my iPhone.