New Years Shrine Visits [Part 2]

The second shrine I decided to visit was the most important one in Japan (right after Kamigamo, which is the second most important). When I was describing it to my parents I described it as the Vatican of Japan, if only because it's just as important to the shinto faith. That shrine is actually two but are jointly known as Ise Jingu [Ise Grand Shrine].

The journey there from Osaka actually isn't too bad. It's pretty easy to get there if you take the Kintetsu Limited Express Train to Ujiyamada Station [an old name for Ise] for about twenty five dollars. I was using a five-day JR pass that I bought for, you guessed it, five times that price but it's worth it for unlimited rides on all JR trains for five days and if it weren't for the New Year's holiday I would have made it out to Tokyo and back that way too. Instead I made it to just outside of Yokohama, but learned my train schedules pretty well because of it, which made this trip a whole lot easier.

There are actually two ways to get to JR Ise Station from Osaka. For a faster way I recommend taking the Biwako Express [no extra ticket charge on nonreserved] to Maebara, transferring to a train to Otsu/Gifu, hopping a new express to Nagoya and then waiting for the New Mie Rapid to come along and riding it down to the station you need. It's a pretty nice view, actually.

Somewhere outside of Taki...

If you want to be anymore scenic than that, then from Osaka you would take the loop line out to Kyoboshi and transfer to the JR Gakkentoshi line towards Nara, hop off at Kizu and take the train one stop to Kamo, then it's mountain train ride to Kameyama, where you can transfer to...the New Mie Rapid or a train heading towards Taki where you transfer again to Ise. If you've ever seen Spirited Away, then you can understand what the train to Kameyama is like. At night you can't see anything through the windows, and if you look at the front of the train you can only see what the train's light illuminates. It's pretty cool actually.

Yes, that is a truck. Yes it's driving under a stone torii.

Once you make it to Ise, if you do it early enough, then I recommend buying a Can Bus pass for six hundred yen, which gives you an all day pass on the Can Bus and includes a museum ticket. I got there around 3 PM and there were only a few more loops that day so I ended up just paying the fare for both ways. Because it was winter and I was short on time, I also decided to head straight to Naiku, the inner shrine and the one where the Sun Goddess Amaterasu is enshrined. It's also highly important considering the emperor is decided from Amaterasu, and as you can imagine...it's a pretty big deal. Just how big? It's so big it gets its own torii gate on the road there.

 Of course when I got there it was almost sunset, but because Ise is a coastal town, the sun takes a while to set. That's pretty awesome considering how late I got there. After passing through several more torii gates, one leading across a stone bridge, I made my way to the first sacred site in Naiku: the river. It has a specific name, but the way kanji work in shinto sites means it could be anything, but was written with the characters for "God River." Much like the Trevi fountain in Rome (if the Trevi fountain were full of Holy Water), you toss your money in, make a wish or prayer, and go on your way.

Sacred River...Sacred River...

Once you make your way to the inner most part of the shrine, you can no longer take photographs. I mean, you could, but I imagine it would be a pretty silly way to get deported. I don't recommend it, as it would be the same as taking a picture of the face of God. It's just not something you do. Because the kami (gods) of shinto carry power naturally, and need to be appeased or their power contained, Ise Jingu is rebuilt every 11 years and has been doing since around the 1200's, using the same building technique each time. 2013 is a rebuild year, and when I got there they were already building the new shrine on the northern site. Hopefully I can go before it opens, because both will be open at that point and Amaterasu just moved to her new home.

Another added benefit of the shrine being so old is that the trees and forest surrounding it haven't been encroached upon apart from modern improvements to certain areas (bathrooms installed or rest areas built). That means that there are some massive trees growing, and some areas that are roped off and marked with paper tags that show it as being sacred.

That person taking a picture is taller than I am.

After I did my looking around I did a quick peek into the shop area and that lead to an adventure in and of itself as I ended up getting lost on my way to the bus stop and walking to the first one I saw...about ten minutes away. I did make it back to the train, and took the Kameyama route back, which meant I made it back late. Unfortunately this was my last major trip over winter break outside of a small takoyaki museum, as the next day I came down with a high fever from a constant early morning-on-the-train-all-day schedule.

Then again, who knows. Maybe it was just the work of the kami.

I did end up going to Geku (the outer/lower shrine) and Naiku again over spring break, which is just a few posts away!

Until Next Time
~Zenko~

New Year's Shrine Visits [Part 1]

Part of the two week long New Year's celebration in Japan involves going to a shinto shrine and drawing your fortune for the year, as well as praying for a beneficial one. Of course, sense Kamigamo Shrine has turned out to be our favorite one, we decided to visit not too long after the New Year started. We didn't know it yet, but it ended up being one of the more important days to go, several of the shirne's artifacts were out and the ceremony for local businessmen was also starting up.

I found out pretty recently that it's not just sumo Kamigamo helped to invent in Japan, but horse racing as well. Which is why horses are also sacred to the shrine and before the main complex is a sacred stable with, you may have guessed it, a sacred horse. I don't think he's usually out, except for sacred occasions, such as this one. And when I say sacred, I mean it's treated as a god, so if you pay to get up close you can feed him a carrot and give him a pat to dispel all evil spirits.

God Horse's House

Oh hey sake.

Beyond this second torii gate was a site we hadn't really seen there yet: all the bad fortunes were tied up. We were lucky enough to draw best luck, so we didn't have to worry about anything too much. To make sure it brought us these fortunes we tucked them inside our wallets for safe keeping and had our friend translate them later. The other pretty common thing at celebrations is sake (nihonshuu), and as each shrine brews its own throughout the year, every shrine you visit will have a different sake, with Fushimi Inari having one of the most important ones (because sake is made from rice, and Inari looks over it). Something pretty cool that they had on display was one of the processes for brewing and an explanation, though I'm not sure what specifically it was as it was entirely in Japanese.

Like I said before, there was a business ceremony going on that day as well, and throughout our time there we saw several priests heading towards a raised platform in a tent where we had previously watched the Karasu Zumo festivities from. We also had the chance to watch a professional sushi chef make quick work of a maguro tuna, utilizing every piece of meat all the way to the head.

Because it was such a nice day, we headed up all the way to the upper part of the shrine, a place we hadn't gone before. We saw a shrine just for a family, a deeper shrine for a god we still haven't figured out the name for but has to do with luck and, of course, a small Inari shrine. What was more surprising, though, was the fact that as we headed down the opposite side of the mountain (where there were no signs warning us of monkies), we found ourselves smack-dab in the middle of the Kamigamo neighborhood. There were houses right next to the torii gates and left us somewhat baffled about how it would feel to live next to a sacred site, and a UNESCO one on top of that.

Apart from that, our visit was rather uneventful. We didn't see any monkies, and were glad for that as Japanese monkies are fairly aggressive.

Happy Year of the Snake!

There was one other shrine I visited within the two week New Year holiday, which will be my next entry!

~Zenko~