Little Tokyo

This weekend we went to Little Tokyo, which is only a couple of miles from our house. We went with our whole team and it was really cool. We had a formal walking tour with a Japanese man explaining all the historic sites around the area. It was interesting that their used to be 30,000 Japanese people living in the area, now there are only about 1500, although many of the shops and stores remain. We ate Japanese food for lunch (chicken terryaki, sushi, miso soup, rice) and even got to have a traditional Japanese dessert called mochi (pronounced MO-Chee). It is rice and beans ground into a paste and wrapped around ice cream- it was actually pretty good and even Luke gave it a try!

This is a huge parade float that cost over $250,000 to create and send to America from Japan. It is a Samurai warrior and at night it was completely lit up.

This is a fire tower that stands right at the front of little Tokyo and is a replica of ones they had in Japan a long time ago.

This is a Buddhist temple we got to go into. The tour guide explained that in Japan, people only go to the temple for weddings, funerals, births, and other special days, unlike Christianity, where we go every Sunday to church.