The Original Lucky Cat Temple!

We spent most of Friday getting back to Tokyo and getting settled in to our final hotel, the Stay Sakura Art Deco Hotel. It's a cool little hotel in Asakusa, just down the street from Sensouji. 13 floors, only 3 rooms each on floors 2-8 and 9-13 have just one family suite sized room each. Each room has a kitchen and bath included (more of a suite that a basic hotel room). The chairs in the rooms are so uncomfortable for someone my size that I had to add cushions both to stop from bruising my butt and make myself tall enough so that my knees weren't above my hips. But at least there were chairs! A really pleasant place and I would absolutely recommend it.

On Saturday, we headed out to Tamagawa to have lunch with Steve, who had just returned from Thailand a few days earlier. I'm kicking myself for not taking any pictures, but we had lunch at a Chinese restaurant in a mall near the station. If that is vague, it's because that's really all I know about it. I took a picture of the restaurant to make sure I was at the right place, but even that's not too helpful for non-Chinese speakers

Same characters as Japanese, but not Japanese...

It s good to see Steve and we had a good time talking to him over lunch, hearing a bit about his trip to Thailand (mostly for a medical checkup, but a little sightseeing as well) and talking about what we were up to this time around. After lunch, we bid him farewell and headed out to Gotokuji, a temple in Setagaya, a town little ways north of Tamagawa. This particular temple piqued our interest because of it's fabled history as the birthplace of one of the most recognized and iconic Japanese customs outside of Japan.

The maneki-neko, or Lucky Cat

Now, the Japanese people will never turn down the opportunity to create a legend, regardless of how painfully unlikely it was to ever have occurred, if it means it will bring more people to a temple or shrine. In this particular case, there are at least four well-known legends around the origins of the maneki-neko. Out of all of them, however, this one has the highest likelihood of actually happening and has written evidence of much of the historical facts surrounding it. So, we're going to go on the assumption that this legend is just an exaggeration and not completely fabricated. Such are the rigorous academic standards of this blog.

The temple itself has been around since 1480 under various names. In the Kan'ei era of the Edo period (1624-1644), the region was under the control of one of the more powerful clans, the Ii clan. Ii Naotaka, the lord at the time, was returning to his estate and passed by the temple where the temple's cat was supposedly beckoning him to come in. His party visited the temple (because how can you ignore a cute cat waving its paw at you?) and a big thunderstorm came in shortly after, allowing them to safely stay at the temple until it passed. They thanked the priest (and the cat) and the temple eventually became the family temple of the Ii clan, bringing much fame and fortune to the temple. The temple created the maneki-neko as an honor to the cat that brought them prosperity. After the death of Naotaka, the temple was named after his posthumous Buddhist name and became Gotoku-ji.

Aside from the cat waving at them, most of this is supported by contemporary documents, and that time period would be about right for the emergence of maneki-neko across Japan (early-mid Edo). One thing to note that makes this even more likely to be close to reality is that the cat at the temple has a bell around its neck, while later incarnations, including the most popular ones seen outside of stores and restaurants, have a coin to signify wealth. This original is just a depiction of a cat with its right paw raised in a beckoning manner and a collar with a bell with no additional meaning. There are many more modern cats, with different colors, different paws raised (sometimes both), all signifying different things, so having the first design be very basic without the trappings that came later makes sense.

All that said, it's a temple with a bunch of cute cat figurines, so of course Sumi wanted to go there. And when I say a bunch, I mean thousands.

Soooo many cats

There are cats on top of other cats!

The temple itself is a real, functioning temple. One that just so happens to do a lot of fundraising off their fortunate history. You can purchase one of the original maneki-neko figurines from the temple. Amusingly, because they are handmade by the temple and because of the Internet, you are limited to one cat per person per visit. The temple proper has some interesting older buildings, including an older three story pagoda with artwork very similar to the buildings in Rinnoji up in Nikko, Kamakura period detailed carvings and such, but old enough so the paint has worn away.

Carvings of a dragons and rabbits. All 12 of the zodiac animals are present

The pagoda itself

Ema with (of course) maneki-neko

He is everywhere

His final evolution?

The 13th zodiac animal?

After our time at the temple, we took the train back towards Tokyo and stopped at Ikebukuro for some souvenir shopping. I stopped at the Yellow Submarine, which is one of the larger stores, and found a copy of Neko Poker! It was re-released in the USA as Panda Panda, but the cat theme is a better fit for the rules. And it's cuter.

We headed up to Sunshine City, a fairly large "mall" that consists of several high-rise buildings. Our old standby Tokyu Hands is no longer there, but some of the shops down in the basement and first floor of the Sunshine City complex are still worth going to. Also, there is a performance space in the basement where there is always something different going on. As it was a weekend, there was sure to be something happening, and sure enough

I shouldn't be surprised, but I still was

So, apparently there are a great many local Japanese Hula Dance troupes. It seems many middle-aged women do it as a hobby, and so there were a bunch of groups of dancers that would go up and do a 10-15 minute performance.

Afterwards, we were quite hungry after walking around all day. We checked the food court and were underwhelmed with the choices and ended up...

We didn't actually get a Samurai Mac, nor did we get the featured item Thick Beef and Garlic Onion Beef (it's actual name. So much beef it says it twice.). When you are starving and need air conditioning...

A Big Mac meal does hit the spot

We allow ourselves one McDonalds visit each trip, for when we end up in situations like this. No apologies. No regrets! 

There was also an odd display at Sunshine City of bunches of plushies piled up. Hard to describe, but it was just a corner with various piles of stuffed character goods with a "Do Not Touch" sign. They did not say we couldn't take some pictures, though

Clearly an advertisement for the stores selling them

And we did visit those stores...before we saw this.

Finally, we headed back to Asakusa, where Sumi wanted a parfait and was not going to take no for an answer. Parfaits in Japan consist of ice cream, corn flakes, and toppings. Our favorite place to have them, the Wired Cafe in Ueno Station, did not have any on the menu this season. As it was late for Japanese dessert places (7pm?), we had few choices and opted for Cafe Gusto, a family restaurant chain. They did, indeed have parfaits and better yet, had a robot cat deliver them!