sunday 6 aug

the sun was up at 4am, can you beat that? coboypb and i were quite kiasu, we woke up at 7am to start our day. we tried to find this maneki neko shrine which was near asakusa.

we didnt have a map, just a sketch from my cat book, i had to use my broken japanese to ask for directions. we searched for more than 30 mins, went in the wrong direction twice, but finally arrived at the shrine. it was surprisingly quiet.


imado shrine - for singles to pray that they will find their other halves!

wishes were written on wooden plagues, there were some that thanked the shrine too (after finding their other halves)


one thing i learnt, try not to ask a guy for directions. they will tell you quite briefly, thats how we got lost twice! and in this heat and hot sun!

we then headed for cat town aka 谷中. black/white in a temple courtyard.


after getting a little lost with inaccurate maps, we finally reached this cool shop on a slope in a residential area that sells cat-related stuff.

entrance is very small like for gnomes!

this is the cashier cat, a nice orange tabby

this is the logistics cat in charge of t-shirt stocks and he's sleeping on the job!


that night while we were fretting about how disappointed we were at the mere number of cats we saw, this darling was sitting outside the izakaya we had dinner at.