Kawagoe

AKA: Candyland, Japan

When Caitlin's father visited a few months back, one of her teachers suggested they take a day trip to a city well known in Japan for, among many things, the production of candy. While this fell through for them, it became her goal (and, subsequently, mine) to visit this special place.

Kawagoe is also known as "Koedo," or "Little Edo" ("Edo" is the old name of Tokyo), as it is the home of a couple of summer palaces of one of the Tokugawa shoguns. On top of this, Kawagoe features a unique architectural style (long and steep roofs) and is also the home of Kita-in, where there are over 500 statues of Buddha. Legend has it that, if one walks through the Buddha statues at night, feeling each one, one will find a statue that is warm to the touch. Mark it and come back the next day, and you will find the statue that most resembles you.


There's something about Buddhas that I love; my enjoyment of the Kanmangafuchi Abyss in Nikko showed my same predilection for the varied statues. The Buddhas of Kita-in were wonderful to walk around, in part because of the tourists there (as lots of people were intently trying to find their resembling statue), but mostly because the statues were just as varied as one would expect from the "find one most like you" legend. The faces and activities of these statues range from stately and nobel to silly and playful, so walking around and looking at them, and even how they interacted with their neighbors, was quite a fun experience.

The temple grounds, too, housed many areas of disinct impressons. One of my favorites, outside of the buddha statues, was a quiet area of graves, all made from the same stone. Few tourists were there (indeed, the only thing there other than ourselves was a mangy cat), and the uniformity of the stone across the grave markers lent the area a formal, but not distant or removed, air.

After visiting another of the palaces and the main drag, both of which lend little to be described, we made our way on to Candy Street. We got there late in the day, unfortunately, and weren't able to spend as much time on the street as we would have liked, but the things we saw were fun indeed. There was a man who was forming animals and other things out of what looked to be taffy on a stick, reminding me strongly of the glass blowers I saw at Third Degree in Saint Louis. We also spent quite a bit of time watching two older people making taiyaki with various fillings.


Along with candy, Kawagoe is well-known for sweet potatoes, so Candy Street featured many unexpected sweet potato products. While I had eaten sweet potato frozen yogurt before in Nikko and Kamakura, I had not yet been exposed to sweet potato beer. In the end, it ended up being pretty much like regular beer, only with a slightly sweeter taste.

Perhaps the best part of living in a country for a while is being able to enjoy those places that are off the beaten path. I surprised many of my teachers upon my return as they themselves have not yet seen the Candyland of Japan. All in all, Kawagoe was quite the nice experience, being a place of many sights, scents, and flavors, made all the sweeter (if I can use the phrase) for it being rich in history and yet not a major tourist attraction. And hey, how many people do you know who've had sweet potato beer?