Visiting Senso-ji Temple in Tokyo

The first time I went to Senso-ji I did what everyone does. Got off the Ginza Line at Asakusa around 11am, walked out of Exit 1, and immediately walked into the back of a thirty-person tour group blocking the pavement in front of Kaminarimon. Someone’s selfie stick caught me in the ear. This is, apparently, the most-visited spot in Tokyo, and I had picked the exact hour the entire city agrees to turn up.

I came back at 6:45 the next morning. Totally different place. Cleaners hosing down the stones in front of the main hall, a few older locals doing their morning prayer, the lantern at Kaminarimon swinging slightly in a breeze I’d missed the day before. That’s the Senso-ji you want. Crowds are real, and by mid-morning they’re genuinely uncomfortable, but this temple has been here for almost 1,400 years and if you plan your hour right it still shows you something quieter than the tour brochures suggest.

This is a guide to doing it — which gate first, how to use the incense cauldron without looking lost, where to tie your bad fortune, and why you must not clap at the main hall (this one tripped me up, because I’d just come from Meiji Shrine two days earlier and the prayer routine there is completely different).

A very quick history (which matters)

On 18 March 628, two brothers called Hinokuma Hamanari and Takenari were fishing in the Sumida River, about two hundred metres from where the current main hall stands. Their net kept catching something that wasn’t a fish. Eventually they fished it out and saw that they had a small statue of the Bodhisattva Kannon, the Buddhist deity of mercy.

The village headman, Haji no Nakatomo, recognised the statue, converted his house into a temple, and devoted the rest of his life to it. In 645 a travelling priest called Shokai built a proper hall and — following a dream — hid the statue from public view. It has been hidden ever since. No chief priest of Senso-ji has ever seen it. Whatever sits inside that locked miniature shrine is the same thing those two brothers pulled out of the river, and nobody alive has laid eyes on it.

The short version of what follows: Tokugawa Ieyasu adopted Senso-ji as a protective temple for Edo in 1590, Asakusa grew into the cultural centre of old Tokyo around it, and then almost all of it burned on the night of 9-10 March 1945 when US firebombs hit the neighbourhood. The main hall was rebuilt in 1958, the pagoda in 1973, the Kaminarimon lantern in 1960.

First, the confession (don’t clap)

I had read three guidebooks and still did the prayer wrong on my first visit. I walked up to the main hall, dropped a ¥5 coin in the offertory box, bowed twice, clapped twice, bowed once more, and felt smug for about eleven seconds. Then I noticed the older woman next to me staring at me with the specific expression I have since learned means “this gaijin has just clapped in a Buddhist temple like it’s a petting zoo”.

You don’t clap at Senso-ji. Clapping is the Shinto thing — what you do at Meiji Shrine, or at Asakusa-jinja (the Shinto shrine literally on the Senso-ji grounds, twenty metres to the right of the main hall). At a Buddhist temple you press your palms together silently, bow, pray, bow again. No clap. The woman did not tell me off. She just watched me get it wrong, which I have since come to find extremely character-building.

Getting there

Senso-ji is served by four different stations all called Asakusa.

• Ginza Line (Tokyo Metro, orange) — the one you want. Take Exit 1, turn left, walk ninety seconds, Kaminarimon appears on your right. Direct from Ueno (3 minutes, ¥180), Shibuya (32 minutes, ¥250).
• Asakusa Line (Toei, rose) — same station complex, different exits. Fine.
• Tobu Skytree Line — terminus inside the Matsuya department store. Useful if you’re coming from Nikko.
• Tsukuba Express — the TX Asakusa station is on the other side of the temple (west). Five minutes direct from Akihabara (¥210). You’ll walk in past the pagoda, which is honestly a nicer way to arrive.

IC card (Suica or Pasmo) works on all of them.

Kaminarimon and the Panasonic connection

The giant red lantern under Kaminarimon is one of the most photographed objects in Tokyo. The gate behind it is dedicated to Fujin (god of wind) and Raijin (god of thunder) — the “rai” in Kaminari is the reading for thunder. Raijin on your right, Fujin on your left as you face the gate.

The lantern isn’t ancient. The original gate burned down in 1865 and the site sat without a gate for 95 years. The current one was rebuilt in 1960, funded entirely by Konosuke Matsushita — the founder of Panasonic. Matsushita had been ill, prayed at Senso-ji, recovered, and donated the gate in thanks. His name is written on the back of the lantern. People rarely look at the back.

Now look straight up from underneath. There’s a carved dragon on the underside, tied to Senso-ji’s formal name Kinryuzan, or “Golden Dragon Mountain”. Most people walk straight past it. It’s my favourite detail in Asakusa.

Nakamise-dori — and why it’s terrible at 11am

Nakamise-dori is one of Japan’s oldest shopping streets — records of stalls on this approach go back to the early 1700s. It runs 250 metres between Kaminarimon and Hozomon, and it is, honestly, a tourist trap during the day. Identical boxed senbei. Mass-produced Hello Kitty in kimono. Green-tea-flavoured everything.

But a few shops here are genuinely old and genuinely good:

• Kimuraya Honten for ningyo-yaki — small sponge cakes with sweet red-bean filling, cooked on a griddle in the window. The shop has been doing this since 1868. ¥600-ish for a small box, warm.
• Kineya for senbei (rice crackers) — the charcoal-grilled ones brushed with soy sauce while you wait.
• Any stall selling age-manju — deep-fried sweet buns, a few hundred yen, eat them hot standing up.

Skip Nakamise at 11am. Come back at 8:30am before the shops open, or — best of all — do the temple first, then wander back around 5pm when the tour groups have left and the light gets good.

The ritual bit — how to do it properly

Senso-ji is a Buddhist temple, so the prayer sequence is different from what you’d do at a Shinto shrine. (Confusingly, Asakusa-jinja, the Shinto shrine honouring the three men who founded Senso-ji, is literally on the same grounds — about twenty metres to the right of the main hall. That one you do clap at. More on the general shrine routine in my Meiji Shrine guide, where that ritual is covered step-by-step.)

At Senso-ji itself, the order goes like this:

1. Purify at the chozuya (water basin)

1. Ladle in right hand. Pour water over your left hand.
2. Switch. Pour over your right hand.
3. Right hand again, pour into your cupped left palm, rinse your mouth, spit discreetly beside the basin.
4. Tip the last of the water down the handle of the ladle. Replace face-down.

2. Waft incense smoke at the jokoro

The large bronze cauldron in front of the main hall is always billowing smoke, said to have purifying and healing properties. People aim it at their head, shoulders, or bad knees. Use your hand, gently. The air smells properly good — cedar and sandalwood.

3. Offer, bow, pray, bow (no clap)

Up the stone stairs to the main hall. Inside the door is a huge wooden offertory box with bars across the top. Lucky coin amounts:

• ¥5 (go-en) — a pun on “good connection or fate”. The traditional offering.
• ¥45 (shi-ju-go-en) — “lifelong good connection”.
• ¥500 — some people think this is bad luck because there’s no bigger coin.

Place (don’t throw) the coin gently between the bars. Palms together. Bow. Pray silently or chant Namu Kanzeon Bosatsu — “I place my trust in Bodhisattva Kannon.” Bow once more. Step back. No clapping.

4. Drawing omikuji (and what to do with a bad one)

Omikuji are paper fortune slips. At Senso-ji they’re ¥100, self-serve from drawers either side of the main hall: drop a coin in the honesty box, shake the silver hexagonal tin, a numbered stick drops out, find the matching drawer, take one slip. The ranks best to worst: Dai-kichi (great blessing), Kichi, Han-kichi, Sho-kichi, Sue-kichi, Kyo (bad), Dai-kyo (great bad).

Here is the part I got wrong. I assumed you tie ALL of them to the rack of wires on the way out, because the racks were covered in them and it looked like what everyone did. Wrong. You take the good ones home and keep them. You tie only the bad fortunes (Kyo, Dai-kyo), so the bad luck stays at the temple. I put my perfectly reasonable Kichi on the rack and gave up my own good fortune. Sat on the steps laughing at myself about it for five minutes.

The five-storey pagoda (which you can’t go inside)

To the left of the Hozomon gate is the five-storey pagoda, one of very few in central Tokyo. The original was built in 942 by the military commander Taira no Kinmasa. Like almost everything else here, it was incinerated in 1945; the current version is from 1973 and contains Buddha’s ashes — a gift from the royal temple of Sri Lanka. Each of the five levels represents one of the five Buddhist elements: earth, water, fire, wind, sky.

The pagoda is closed to visitors because the upper floors are a columbarium — a vertical graveyard. The red paint is repainted every few years, which is why it always looks newer than you’d expect a 10th-century building to (it isn’t — the paint hides a 1973 reconstruction).

Hozomon, the giant straw sandals, and the bit most people walk past

Hozomon is the second gate, between Nakamise and the main hall. Two fierce-looking guardian statues (Nio) stand in the front alcoves — the one on the left was modelled on a 1960s sumo wrestler called Kitanoumi.

Walk through Hozomon, turn around. Two enormous straw sandals (waraji) hang on the rear wall. They are 4.5 metres long each and weigh 2.5 tonnes. They’re remade roughly every decade by 800 citizens of Maruyama in Yamagata Prefecture, as a thank-you for a sculptor from their town whose work is on the gate. Symbolism: they’re the shoes of a giant demon-guardian, and no demon would dare enter a gate where the resident giant is clearly that big.

Yogodo, Awashimado, and the quiet corners

Go left of the main hall instead of right and you find the bits of Senso-ji almost nobody photographs. Yogodo houses eight Buddhas, each associated with one or two animals of the Chinese zodiac — whichever animal you were born under, there’s a specific Buddha here who looks after you. This is also where you get your goshuin — hand-written calligraphy stamps for a stamp book (¥500 per entry).

Behind Yogodo is Awashimado, a small hall from the Genroku Period (1688-1704) that was used as the temporary main hall for a decade after the 1945 bombing. Tokyo’s oldest surviving stone bridge, from 1618, is tucked in the tiny garden beside Yogodo. Almost nobody goes there. I always sit on a bench nearby for ten minutes when the front of the temple gets overwhelming.

Sanja Matsuri — the wildest three days in Tokyo

If you’re in Tokyo on the third full weekend of May, rearrange your plans. Sanja Matsuri is Asakusa’s festival, held by Asakusa-jinja, and it’s the biggest and rowdiest in Tokyo — 1.5 million people over three days, around a hundred mikoshi (portable shrines) each carried by thirty or forty men shouting in unison. The three shrines are for Hinokuma Hamanari, Takenari and Haji no Nakatomo — the fishermen and the village headman from the 628 AD story. 1,400 years later, the neighbourhood is still carrying them through the streets.

Come Sunday morning for the three huge main mikoshi leaving Asakusa-jinja. Noisy, chaotic, properly emotional. Genuinely dangerous in the crowds too, so watch small kids like a hawk.

When to come (ranked)

1. 6:30-8:30am any weekday — best. Main hall opens at 6:00 (April-September) or 6:30 (October-March). Grounds are open 24/7. You’ll get the stone courtyard, the lantern shot, the pagoda and the incense smoke in near-quiet.
2. After 7pm — grounds stay open, temple floodlit, Nakamise closed but walkable. Very photogenic, slightly eerie.
3. A rainy weekday afternoon — weirdly underrated. Crowds thin, umbrellas make the place feel like a woodblock print.
4. Any summer weekend afternoon — don’t. Uncomfortably crowded by 10am.
5. 1-3 January (Hatsumode) — three million people come here in the first three days of the year. It’s an experience. Also elbow-to-elbow shuffling in subzero weather. Glad I did it once.

A 90-minute visit, my version

If I’m starting from Ueno at 7:15am:

• 7:20 — Ginza Line to Asakusa, Exit 1. Kaminarimon. Lantern photo with nobody in it. Look up at the dragon.
• 7:25 — Down Nakamise. Most shops still closed. The emptiness is the point.
• 7:35 — Under Hozomon. Around the back for the straw sandals.
• 7:40 — Chozuya. Then the incense cauldron. Waft.
• 7:50 — Main hall. Coin, bow, pray, bow. No clap.
• 8:00 — Omikuji. Hope for Kichi or above.
• 8:10 — Left of the main hall: Yogodo, Awashimado, the old stone bridge. Sit.
• 8:25 — Right of the main hall: Asakusa-jinja (this one you clap at). Crest is three fishing nets.
• 8:40 — Back down Nakamise. Ningyo-yaki from Kimuraya. Done.

If you’ve got another hour, walk fifteen minutes east to Tokyo Skytree — the walk along the Sumida River is nice. Or wander the streets of Asakusa proper, one of the most walkable neighbourhoods in Tokyo.

Practical info at a glance

• Main hall hours: 06:00-17:00 (April-September), 06:30-17:00 (October-March)
• Grounds: open 24/7
• Cost: free. You pay only for incense (¥100), omikuji (¥100), amulets (from ¥500), goshuin stamp (¥500).
• Accessibility: grounds are mostly flat, paved. Main hall has 7-8 steps with a ramp on the right.
• Nighttime illumination: year-round, sunset until roughly 23:00.
• Official site: senso-ji.jp. Also: Go Tokyo and JR East for route planning.

The main hall, from inside

One thing I didn’t realise my first time: you can go into the main hall. Shoes stay on. Up the steps, through the bronze doors, and you’re in the outer sanctum. The inner sanctum (naijin), where the concealed Kannon statue sits in its miniature temple-within-a-temple, is beyond the low railing, and you can’t enter unless there’s a service on. But the ceiling paintings above you are the best bit. Dragons, celestial maidens, clouds. Sit on a bench at the side of the hall and watch.

Buy an omamori amulet from the counter on the right if you want one — each protects something specific (travel, exams, safe childbirth, good relationships). ¥500-800. You’re not supposed to open the fabric pouch, because that releases the protection. I have never opened mine.

When I leave Senso-ji I go back through Hozomon, down Nakamise with a warm ningyo-yaki in my hand, under the red lantern, and out. The crowds have usually built up by then. But the bit I come for — five or six minutes of quiet inside the main hall, with the ceiling paintings and the smell of incense still in my hair — is the bit that keeps bringing me back.