Tokyo!! Part 3: Asakusa

So last weekend, Yumi and I went to Asakusa, which is this really fun little area in Tokyo. It has a large Buddhist temple, along with a Shinto shrine and some other buildings. It used to be sort of a geisha pleasure quarter, though that was taken over by other areas. But there are still lots of festivals there and it's just a neat place to visit - it was an interesting mix of tourists and Japanese people, all having fun and taking pictures. On the road leading up to the temple, there are all sorts of fun little shops, some of which sell souvenirs and some sell really yummy little snacks! We tried lots of tasty things:

These are little cake-like cookies, filled with red bean paste. Delicious!! I got a bird and Yumi, a temple. Red bean paste is common in the sweets here and it makes a very yummy filling! The place were we got these was made by a little machine, and they were fresh off and still warm. Further down the street, however, the stores made them by hand and it was really interesting - they dripped dough in a mold, then put the paste in and then covered it, closed the mold and put in on a hot stove.
This store had been there for several hundred years and I doubt the methods have changed.

We also had some mochi, which is made out of rice paste. Both our little mochi treats were also filled with red bean paste, delicious!! The first one is green mochi, filled with red bean with a powder on the outside, that created a bit mess when you tried to bite into it.The second one, with the dark spots, is fried mochi with black sesame seeds. Clearly, here in Japan I have developed a new love of the red bean.

After Asakusa, we headed back to Shibuya to watch some independent films, which were about the filmmakers' interpretations of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's slogan, Utsukushii Kuni he, translated into English as "towards a beautiful country." The films were interesting, but hard to understand, especially the third one, which was about a director showing a film in his home town. I felt all cool seeing independent films in Tokyo. But really, I just wanted some more mochi and red bean paste!