A lot of people's mental image of crowded Japan is something like this.
Jean-Paul is on the left as we climb the long shop-bracketed stairway up to
Kiyomizu-dera. Apparently there's some superstition that if you trip on the
way up this stairway that you'll have bad luck for a year or something.
Probably doesn't help the throngs move forward in a timely fashion (though it
wasn't too bad).