Our Japan travel advisor, Alan Gibson of Trans Orbit in Sydney, recommended a day trip from Tokyo to Kawagoe. We took a half hour train journey on the Tobu Tojo Line from Ikebukuro Station (not JR by appearances), but our Pasmo cards worked). Kawagoe is described as being in Saitama Prefecture in the Kanto Region, but, looking out the train window, it seemed we never left Tokyo suburbs.
The locals refer to this town as Little Edo after the old name for Tokyo, due to the historic buildings preserved here than cannot be seen in downtown Tokyo. Whatever, we saw this town to be a bustling metropolis, crowded beyond belief on this holiday day.
The entire 1km walk from Kawagoe Station up to the "Warehouse District" was along this crowded shopping mall.
This troupe of troubadores were noise and popular in Kawagoe. Nothing in English for us, but their stage rotated on that wagon!
To get from the station to the part of town where the most historic buildings are, as well as several popular shrines, we walked about a kilometer along a street thankfully preserved as a pedestrian mall, lined with shops and cafes, and just packed to the gunnels. Google maps on our phone was very helpful, but really, we just had to follow the crowds!
New Year brings out the crowds, and the stalls selling all manner of products.
Rickshaw puller looks for an opportunity to do a u-turn.
Typical appearance of Edo wooden architecture in this Kawagoe shop.
Another Kawagoe high street shop.
Sadly, the main stretch of historic buildings in Kurazukuri Street are not in a pedestrian mall, but are lined up along a narrow street with very narrow footpaths. It's the main street of the town. The street is clogged with traffic (the heaviest we have so far seen in Japan) and the footpaths a packed with strolling shoppers and sightseers, all Japanese, very few foreigners. Fortunately, Japanese drivers are most disciplined, and the cars proceed in a very slow but orderly fashion.
Beloved by their owners, but these absurdly lowered Chevvies just add to the traffic up Kawagoe's main street.
The New Year holidays continue to attract long queues to pray at shrines.
Kimono clad ladies returning from New Year's prayers.
This monkey exploiter was happy to take the crowd's money, but was not keen to be photographed.
The historic buildings, Edo era vintage (up to mid 1800's), are now mostly shops and look to be in very good order. They are really difficult to photograph sympathetically due to cars, crowds, and bright sunshine plus deep shadows from huge eaves. The day of our visit was brilliantly sunny, about 5-10C but feeling quite cold due to 5-10km/hr wind. Lots of our best photos accompany this blog.
This colorful and crowded shrine entertained us with chanting and drums.
A quiet moment at this mobile fast-food outlet.
Finding a lunch spot was challenging. Cafes had long queues outside, and often we didn't know what they were offering anyway. So we made our choice based on where we could get in easily, a 2nd Floor cafe (Japanese storey numbering starts at 1 at ground level) called Lightening where we were made to feel most welcome and were able to make sense of the menu. We even had a view over the street. We've found very few people with reasonable English, menus are rarely in English, and of course our Japanese is non-existent.)
Exquisite detail in this "clay warehouse" example.
Clay warehouses like this one are the pride of Kawagoe.
Narrow crowded footpaths highlight Kawagoe's popularity, but lower the ambience.
According to a waitress at the Tokyo Hilton, Kawagoe is famous for sweet potatoes, and indeed various manifestations of that vegetable seem to be readily available in town. Downstairs from the Lightening cafe, a street stall was selling fried kumera chips to a queue trailing well down the street. A generous young customer saw us looking and gave us a chip from her pack as a sample.
Downstairs from our lunch cafe was this outlet selling fried kumera chips, a local specialty.
The iconic clock-tower of Kawagoe bongs sonorously five times to a schedule 4 times a day. We were there for the 3pm performance,
A notable landmark of Kawagoe is a bell tower, the Bell of Time, which was first built in 1644 and has been telling the town's residents the time since then. Like a lot of structures in Japan, it was destroyed by fire, and the present reconstruction was built in 1894. Apparently is was this fire which inspired the clay construction techniques which now characterise Kawagoe.
A sign at the bell told us that the it makes one of the "100 sounds of Japan" so we positioned ouselves to hear its 3pm performance. We think it operates automatically, certainly no-one climbed up into the tower, and the five bongs we heard, spaced by about 20 seconds, were soft but very deep and low. Certainly, only nearby residents would be able to set their clocks by this timepiece!
Kawagoe has a whole streetscape of shops like this.
Another remarkable Kawagoe shop.
And another one, all endlessly photogenic.
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