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~