Come for the Temple, stay for the Shopping
I came that close to missing this wonderful cultural gem of a temple and the charming neighbourhood around it. It was at the end of a long day, I only had a few hours in Tokyo left, and I was all "templed out", but, what the heck, everyone kept talking about it so I jumped into a taxi and went. I must say, this is a site in Tokyo that is not to be missed! The beautiful temple grounds not only have interesting historic buildings, statues and pagodas, but are like a constant street faire with food and souvenir booths. The shopping stalls are not the regular commonly available stuff like at airports (t-shirts and keychains), but rather the nice, hand-crafted, authentic Japanese stuff (fans, lacquer boxes, masks, lanterns, netsuke, kimonos, straw hats, umbrellas, tea cups, etc). It was the exactly the type of quality shopping that I had been looking all over for. At the end of the shopping lane, I also had the best Ten-Don (tempura donburi) that I ever had in my life! I was so glad I went to Asakusa, after coming so close to missing it.