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Travel report with lots of stolen pictures: Washinomiya

This is an incredibly late report, but better late then never! All but one of the photos is stolen from Moondabor, who pretty much single-handedly made my two weeks in Tokyo three times as interesting and infinitely more maidy.

About a month ago, I went with a big ol’ group of gaijin to one of the few shrines most otaku will ever willingly visit: Washinomiya, aka “you know, the Lucky Star shrine.” And Lucky Star shrine it was. The place looks like any other small-medium-sized town in the Kanto area, except a large number of stores have realized that they can make a ton of money from fairly quiet people who smell a little funny if they put up some signs and offer minor changes to their goods and services.

Naturally, the first thing we did upon leaving the station was go to a very small restaurant and order some “Tsukasa no Katsudon Dakee~!”s. The store was run by a very elderly couple, and the only other customer there was an equally elderly man watching the Olympics on an ancient tv set while an equally ancient electric fan was blowing on him. There was a full set of Lucky Star figures placed next to the tv which one of the guys with me identified in about 10 seconds, noting that he too owned the set. As our food came, the lady working our table also had Lucky Star chopstick holders and Lucky Star Washinomiya-area food store stamp rally sheets, and confirmed that we were there for “this,” in the simplest Japanese she could muster. The katsudon wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t really that “Dakee~”, but it did have an egg on top!

The actual temple was a pretty short walk from the station, and before we knew it, we were at those famous gates. Of course, we were immediately distracted by the nearby itasha, oddly placed billboards with ads for affordibly-priced Minoru Shiraishi haircuts, and of course this bizarre doll that appears to be half Konata, half KFC ad.

The temple itself was very quiet, it being a weekday afternoon and all. I mean, despite all this anime stuff, the place is still a regular temple, with regular temple stuff like this huge sign about the temple’s history that none of us even made an attempt to feign interest in. We did some regular temple stuff, like washing your hands and drinking some temple water like “the sign with the loli that they had in lucky star” tells you to on a handy poster, and ringing the bell and clapping and bowing and messing up the order in which you’re supposed to do all that business.

I guess there were some really faint signs that an otaku or two had been to the temple, like a board here and there on this thing (…(2), (3), (4), (5).) I’m fairly sure we spent a good half hour just looking at these things, because there were some real gems in here. Some highlights:

I have to say that I had more fun than I was expecting, but I doubt I’ll ever be going back to the place, unless someone wants to accompany me as I finish the rest of this damn stamp rally. Anyone who has the opportunity that remotely cares about this stuff should go out there, it’s a good excuse to say that you took in some Japanese culture while also nerding out at the same time, not to mention that the place will probably go back to being yet another decrepit small town in another few years :(

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 8:48 am by kransom and is filed under