Ise

Last weekend my wanderings took me to Ise, about 3 hours east of Himeji. Ise is famous for Naiku and Geku, two of the most sacred shrines in Shintoism. This is the place where the Japanese goddess, Amaterasu Omikami, is believed to live, as well as Toyouke Omikami, the goddess of clothing, food and housing, who provides Amaterasu with sacred foods. The temples are in a beautiful setting - forests of ancient cedar and next to a clear river. Both the cedars and Isuzu River are sacred – I saw many people pressing theirs hands and foreheads to certain large cedar trees, and everyone stopped to purify their hands and mouths in the river before approaching Naiku.

Interestingly, these buildings are rebuilt every twenty years to exact specifications. In fact, next to every building is the bare alternate site waiting for the next set of buildings. The next rebuilding will be in 2013.

Most of the buildings are mostly out of sight – only the Imperial family, who is descended from Amaterasu, and some high-ranking Shinto priests are allowed to see them.

Since this is such a sacred site, I assume this shrine is THE place to buy your household shrine.

After visiting the shrines, I strolled along the streets where all the tourist stores were. Tea, apparently, is a specialty of the area, as well as these tiny shrimp-like things.
And everyone was enjoying fish-cake on a stick, well everyone but me!

I stayed the night at a little ryokan (guesthouse) in Ise. My room was small and simple, but suitable. The futon is the folded bundle under the window. The ryokan had a little courtyard in the middle of the building.


On Sunday, I hopped on a train to nearby Futami where the famous wedded rocks are. You may have seen photos of them as a classic Japanese site. The rocks are called Meotoiwa, and they are certainly smaller than I expected! For scale, you can see the bird (I think it’s a cormorant) stretching its wings on top of the torii (the bird is alive. At first I thought it was a statue!) Frogs seem to be the symbol of the shrine next to the rocks.

Actually there are two separate shrines next to the rocks, one to the god of marriage, traffic safety, and exorcism (yes, one god for these three seemingly unrelated things), and the other to the god of the sea.
Next to the Meotoiwa, there were stalls selling snacks such as sea urchin, squid on a stick and snails roasted in their shells. I relied on the local convenience store as my source of snacks for the day!

A few interesting quotes from the English versions of the tourist brochures:
“Gourmet in Shima? That’s bonza!”
“We recommend that you challenge to eat lobsters raw and alive”
“Accommodations in Futami are full of emotion”
“Enjoying whole aspects of Futami full of joyful aquarium, …”