We woke up at 8am and decided to see Gotokuji Temple first thing in the day! Walking to Shibuya station there was quite a lot of interesting street art. We walked to Shibuya Station and took the Den-en-toshi line to Sangen-jaya station. We then walked to the streetcar line “Tokyu-Setagaya ”. The streetcar line is really cool, some of the trains are cat themed because of Gotokuji Temple. We tapped our ICU Suica cards and stood at the front of the platform. The train arrived, but sadly not a cat themed one, and we got on.

I really like street cars, like the ones in Hakodate and Hiroshima. We took the streetcar about five stops and got off at Miyanosaka station. We then walked about 10 minutes to Gotokuji Temple. We had tried to go to Gotokuji in 2019, but we couldn’t find the lucky cats! It turns out the temple is massive, so this time we went in a different entrance.

The entrance was cedar lined and led to a four story pagoda with little secret cats on it. We found the cat shrine! 

There was a metal waving cat statue at the entrance, and lots and lots of different sized white waving cats with red details. There were about six shelves full of waving cats on one side of the shrine and about eight more full shelves around the back of the shrine.

Some of the cats were personalised with messages and drawings. Some cats were coloured black with marker or made stripped with pens to look like specific cats (I am assuming). One big cat statue was covered in “J-hope” (my BTS bias). The cats vary in size from ½” to 8” tall. We took so many photos and videos, but after trying to find the shrine for a few years, we had to make it worth our while! 

On our walk back to the station we stopped at the kombini for breakfast, and I noticed a sign that seemed to indicate a sumo wrestler shrine. My Japanese reading is not good, but we decided to walk only a few minutes out of our way to check it out! 

We entered the shrine through a massive tori gate and turned to the right, following the sounds of running water. There was a little bridge that led to a small waterfall. The temple had about four layers, as you climbed up the stairs, you also were taken deeper into the forest. We climbed the first set of steps and turned to the right, there amongst the trees in a little clearing was what appeared to be an ancient sumo wrestling stage with spectator seating carved out into the hard ground. Everything was covered in moss, it truly felt magical. There was a sign that said the grounds were in fact sumo wrestling grounds and that this wrestling ring was one of the most important in Japan, hosting a yearly sumo match dating back to the Edo era. What an incredible find, I was so glad that we had taken our little detour.  

There was a couple visiting the shrine as well with their little Italian Greyhound who they took photos of in one of those “pop your head through and take a photo” set ups.

After taking in the sumo wrestling temple, we went back to the station and made our way to our next stop…