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Feb 10 2010 3 Comments

A saunter around Sugamo

It’s not unusual to see Buddhist priests offering prayers and accepting money outside stations or dotted about Tokyo’s streets, but from my experience at least, I have never seen anyone stood talking or receiving ‘treatment’ from them. Well, until a recent saunter around Sugamo that is.

Known as the Harajuku for old ladies, where the average age is about 107 and there’s more pushiness than at a pushing contest for the overly pushy, priests are not only present in noticeably larger numbers than normal, but they also appear to offer (literally) hands-on help with certain ailments — photographs of which I regrettably didn’t manage to get due to the just mentioned amounts of jostling.

I did, however, bag some pictures of a few priests in more communicative action.

Japanese priests in Sugamo

The pair of them dealing with what, for want of a better description, looked like a load of old ladies lining up for confession.

Japanese priests in Sugamo

Although what they were actually talking about, and whether this kind of thing is common, I really don’t know, but I’d certainly welcome any suggestions from somebody who does.

Categorized: Photography, Religion

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rob says

    2/10/2010 at 9:48 pm

    That’s some serious headwear…..

    Reply
  2. My Kafkaesque Life says

    2/11/2010 at 10:17 pm

    I remember seeing fake monks in KL, selling small key chains pretty aggresively. My then girlfriend said don’t talk to them, ignore them, but they kept pushing. So I finally talked and they won’t stop. I went away they went after me. But that’s completely non-related to your post, haha. Or should I say, very vaguely 😉

    Reply
  3. Koi says

    2/13/2010 at 3:23 am

    Off topic here…
    There is a gaijin friendly onsen/restaurant, “Sakura”, near the Sugamo station. They offer free mini-bus transfer from/to the Sugamo Yamanote line station. I’ve been there twice when I was in Tokyo last October.

    Reply

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