Day 30 - Kawagoe with Amy and Megumi!

Hey everyone!

Amy, Megumi and I went on a little day trip to Kawagoe in Saitama Prefecture on the 11th of October!

Saitama is part of the Greater Tokyo Area and can be considered to be the suburbs of Tokyo.

Kawagoe is known for its sweet potatoes and its Edo period buildings. You can buy lots of foods made from sweet potatoes ranging from ice cream to beer!

First we walked around the streets looking at the shops and the traditional Edo period buildings (17th - 19th Century).

We found a Hello Kitty shop during our wandering and couldn't resist popping in to take a look!

There were so many different Hello Kitty products from Chopsticks to Furoshiki (a traditional wrapping cloth often used to tie up bento boxes)

This shop was selling purple sweet potato ice cream!

These sweets were made to look like bento (lunch) sets

One shop we went to was selling really pretty Japanese sweets and senbei (rice crackers). They all looked really pretty, but I managed to resist the temptation to buy any!

This was the back room of the Japanese sweet shop - It had such a Japanese feel to it!

This shop also sold wagashi. Wagashi are traditional Japanese sweets often served with green tea. Wagashi are usually colourful and made into very attractive designs such as flowers or animals. Wagashi are usually made from plant based ingredients such as azuki bean paste (red bean paste) or fruits.

Flower-shaped wagashi

Toki no kane - The Bell of Time

We later saw Kawagoe's bell tower which rings 4 times a day and has been telling the time for around 350 years!

We visited a shop that was pretty much entirely dedicated to selling chopsticks. There were so many of them!

Tester chopsticks with bowls of beans to the right of them!

They had special chopsticks for both right and left-handed people. You could test them out by transferring the beans with the chopsticks from bowl to bowl. Naturally, we all had a go at picking up the beans!

It almost looked like Ollivander's wand shop with all the chopsticks on display!

More pretty Kawagoe streets!

My green tea doriyaki

We took a little break to chat and have a snack! Meg and Amy both tried an ice cream while I went for a green tea doriyaki. Doriyaki are pancake sandwiches with a sweet filling (usually red bean).

This shop was a really cute little store filled with cat products

It was getting late and we were running out of time so we headed on over to Hikawa Shrine 氷川神社 before it closed.

It was already dark so we unfortunately couldn't see the vibrant colours but the atmosphere was really nice. Although this doesn't come out quite so well in my photos I am afraid!

When we got there, there were some people dressed in traditional clothes praying inside the shrine.

Blessing the charm

I bought a charm for my phone, if I am correct it is intended to give good luck in love. When I bought it the woman put the charm on the tray, over which, she blessed it and put it in a package with the temples name on it.

Hikawa shrine at night

We walked through a little tunnel that had peoples wishes hung up on the walls.

Before we left we prayed in front of the shrine. Meg taught me and Amy to throw a coin into the box and the correct way to pray.

To end the evening we went to grab something to eat.

We had a cocktail each - all of which were pretty tasty.

Mochi Mochi Cheese Mochi

We chose together different dishes to share. The plate above were deep fried cheese-mochi cakes. It had a really weird name - Mochi mochi cheese mochi!

The food was all really good. It was nice sharing as it meant that we could try lots of different things!

After dinner we all decided to order a dessert each! Unfortunately they didn't have the crepe I was really hankering for so decided to try the salted creme brulee.

The creme brulee

Amy, of course, went with the matcha option!

 The creme brulee was pretty good but instead of it being a general salty-caramel flavour there were peices of rock salt on the hard caramel crisp on top. And although I am a big fan of salt, the pieces were a bit too large.

The envelope my phone charm came in

Above is the charm I bought from Hikawa shrine. The flowers were all dyed different colours and each charm had a different pattern on them so I spent a while picking out my favorite-looking charm.

I ended up going with one with light pinks to match my phone case!

I think the design of the charm is really cute. The little sakura blossoms have beads in the center and there is a little gold-coloured metal sakura blossom attactched to the string.
The gold blossom has the characters 氷川神社 (hikawa shrine) on one side. On the other side is the kanji 縁(enishi) meaning fate or a fated romantic tie.

Sorry if this post was a little brief!

If you ever have any questions or comments, let me know in the comments section below!

See you for now!