Its tradition in Japan to visit a shrine or temple during ’shogatsu’, or the new year. Most people will go on January 1, but new years celebrations last until January 3. So, on January 2, I struck out on a trip to visit Japan’s holiest Shinto shrine. I had known about Ise Shrine ever since my first asian studies course at U of M, Japanese Women in Literature (Asian 220). In this class we read the Kojiki (collection of creation myths for Japan) as well as the Tale of Genji, both of which mention Ise Shrine and its importance, so when I came to Japan I knew that I had to visit it before I left.

Some information on Ise Shrine: Ise Jingu (which is generally just referred to as Jingu (meaning shrine), is a shrine to the Shinto goddess Amaterasu, the sun goddess. It is located in the city of Ise of Mie prefecture, and is actually a shrine complex made up of more than 100 individual shrines, divided into two parts. Geku (外宮), or the outer shrine, is dedicated to Toyouke, a deity of food and service, while Naiku (内宮), the inner shrine, is located 4 kilometers away from Geku, is for Amaterasu. According to the Kojiki, Ise Shrine was built in 4 BCE, but most historians date it to around 690 CE (the Kojiki was written in 712 CE). Every 20 years, the old shrines are demolished, and a new shrine is build in an identical adjoining space. The current buildings were built in 1993, and are the 61st iteration of the shrine (it will be rebuild in 2013). Enshrined inside of Ise Shrine is one of the three Imperial Regalia of Japan, the Sacred Mirror (along with the sword, Kusanagi (housed in Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya, which I have visited), and the magatama (jewel) that is housed at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo). Because Ise Shrine is the holiest Shinto shrine in Japan, you cannot view the temples directly, as they are behind very tell fences.

Waking up at 8am, I looked out the window to find it drizzling in Hikone. Naturally the forecast had gone from a 10% chance of rain the night before, to 80% the next morning. But, I had already made up my mind to go, so I took a shower and packed my backpack, and got out to my bike by around 9:15am. I had wanted to catch the 9:47am train to Maibara, because the train I would have to take to get to Ise only left Nagoya station on the hour, so leaving at 9:47am from Hikone would mean only a 10 minute wait for the train once I got to the station (versus a 50 minute wait if I decided to leave from Hikone at 10am). It only rained a little bit on my ride to the station, and luckily once I got there I found the Al Plaza *free* bike parking area was open! So I parked there and went into the station, showing the station attendant my Seishun 18 ticket (its last use!), I made it onto the train platform with about 5 minutes to spare. Got on the train for Maibara, an all of 4 minute trip. Once there I transferred to the Tokaido line, and headed to Nagoya station. An hour later, I made it to Nagoya. Since it was around lunch time, I decided to leave the station and hunt down a McDonalds or some other place to get some food. Not finding anything, and having only about 10 minutes until the special Mie Rapid would leave Nagoya for Ise, I went back in and bought some tea, then headed for the platform. The train was already sitting there, so I got on and grabbed a seat. Unfortunately I didn’t know that I had sat in the reserved seat section, so about 5 minutes later some woman comes up and just kind of silently stared at me for a moment….obviously thinking that I wouldn’t understand what she was going to tell me. Then she said ‘reserved’ and I realized my mistake, so I said “gomenasai” and got up to find another seat. Since this train was made up of all of 2 cars (as opposed to the probably 10 or so that I usually ride on), there were no other seats left. Not knowing where the first stop was going to be on this train, I was looking at the possibility of standing for the entire 1 hour trip. Halfway into it I was finally able to grab a seat, and around that time the conductor came by and I had to pay an extra 490yen since this particular train ran on both JR and a private train company’s tracks. Flashing my Seishun 18 ticket to the conductor, the woman next to me saw it and started talking to me (in Japanese) a bit, asking me things like where I was going and where I was living in Japan. We chatting for a few minutes, and as she got off at her stop she wished me a ‘good luck’ on my trip to Ise.

Getting to Ise around 1pm, I didn’t have a clue where I was supposed to go to get to the shrine, but luckily there was a map out front of the station, so I was able to figure out that I just had to walk down the main street a couple blocks, and I would be there. Following the crowds, I saw a lot of police officers directing traffic. Once entering the shrine (I went to the outer shrine, or Geku first), I walked around with the masses of people and saw the ginormous chamfer and fur trees. A guidebook I was given later told me some of them were 500 years old. Because the shrines are so sacred, there is a large fence erected in front of the main buildings, so approaching the shrine, all I could see were the small buildings and torii gates that lead to the main shrine, with parts of the thatched roof of the main shrine poking above the fence line. I had read how crowded the main temples and shrines get right after the new year, but I was kind of surprised because it didn’t seem quite as crowded as I thought it would be. After taking some pictures and looking at the space next to the shrine where they would build its next iteration (in Heisei 25 (2013) a sign told me), I wandered back to the entrance of the shrine and bought an ema (wooden prayer tablet) that was attached to an arrow, along with a charm. The ema had a dog on it, because now it was 2006, the year of the dog!

Thinking that I had just seen the shrine, I wandered back towards the station. I stopped by the Ise Tourist Information Center, because I had seen people carrying around maps, and I wanted to grab one for my scrapbook. It was at this time that I was informed that the inner shrine wasn’t just the buildings behind the fence that I had just seen, but were actually 4km away. I was told that I could take the bus to get there, so I wandered over to the temporary bus center that was set up directly accross the street from what I now knew was Geku, the outer shrine. I wasn’t really sure what the name of the inner shrine was, and I didn’t know how to read the kanji correctly, so I was a little confused when I went to buy my bus ticket. I ended up saying something that the woman interpreted as a ‘one day pass’, which worked well enough even if I did end up paying 120yen that I didn’t need to (but oh well, I got a cool souvenir instead!). Hopping on the bus, I headed over to Naiku, the inner shrine, where Amaterasu is enshrined. It was at Naiku that the whole “there’s gonna be 7 million people at the shine” thing actually came to reality. While I don’t really know how many people were there, the place was completely swamped. Walking over the famous bridge to get to the shrine, I walked through a sea of people, and when we started getting near the main shrine, the crowd came to a complete standstill about 300 feet from the shrine, which was in front of me and then up some stairs which turned to the right. I think the line of people was probably 30 wide, and we slowly crept along, getting closer and closer to the shrine. I was the *only* foreigner in the crowd, but it seemed like today I didn’t get the same amount of staring that usually occurs when I go somewhere. It took us about 30 minutes to finally get up to the shrine, and that was only because I was able to go to the side of the line that was going up the steps for people who were only going to be walking by the shrine, and wouldn’t be stopping directly at its gate and praying. At Naiku I was able to see even less of the main shrine, however I was able to sneak around to a corner and take a picture of the roof from behind the fence (even though I’ve read that photographing the inner shrine is forbidden…..guess I’ll be reincarnated as a hell beast next time…).

Naiku was set up and looked almost identical to Geku, and despite the fact that it was the beginning of January, the weather was very nice and the forests that I walked through were all still very green. They also had a very nice, clam smell to them, helped by the fact that it was just slightly damp outside. The giant trees were just amazing, and really set the scene for such an important shrine. It wasn’t until after I returned to JCMU that I also read that at Naiku, the Imperial Family’s horses are stabled, and on the 11th and 21st of the month, they are taken out and worshipped. Unfortunately I didn’t see them while I was there. After I had finished wandering around the shrine’s grounds, I left the shrine and took the bus back to Geku, where I planned on taking the train a couple stops down the line to see Meoto Iwa, or the Wedded Rocks, which are a pair of rocks off the shore of Futami, in Mei prefecture, that are connected with a rice straw rope and are said to represent the Japanese creation deities Izamai and Izanagi (who happen to be the parents of Amaterasu). However, when I got back to the train station it was around 3:30pm, and I discovered that the next train for Futami didn’t leave until around 4pm, which meant that by the time I would get there it would probably already be dark, and then I would sit in Futani station for another long while to wait for the Mie Rapid to pass by me again. So, I decided to pass on it for this trip.

Sitting around in Iseshi station for the next 30 minutes, once the Mie Rapid finally got there I was able to jump on it fast enough to find a seat (this time in the NONresevered section), where I was able to half-sleep my way through the next hour. I think this train is the first I’ve been on that has not been powered by electricity, as I never saw any lines running above us, and the train’s motor was very loud and sounded like your basic combustion engine. This time, the conductor didn’t come around and charge me another 490yen. Getting back to Nagoya station, I had another mission to complete: make it to the Hard Rock Cafe in Nagoya and pick up the Guitar Case pin that I didn’t have yet. I remembered where it was this time, so it was pretty easy to find. Picked up that pin along with the very cool Fashion Statement pin (a pin for each HRC that has a woman in a kimono standing in front of a map of Japan, which has each cafe’s location marked on the map…..why couldn’t they have had this one available when I was in Tokyo??). Taking the subway back to Nagoya station, it was now around 6pm and I hadn’t eaten anything except for a croissant and crackers that I had brought with me as a snack. I wanted to find a McDonalds, and figured since it was the huge Nagoya station, there had to be one around somewhere. After a good 15 minutes of searching though, I couldn’t find one. So I settled with buying a few baked goods from a store, and then running to get on a Rapid back to Maibara. Wasn’t able to get a seat on this train at first, but after a few stops I was able to steal one before anyone else could. Unwrapped one of my unknown baked goods and was pleasantly surprised to find it to be a muffin with apples and raisins inside of it. (The other thing I bought, a nifty looking star-shaped roll, I ate the next day, and to my horror I bit into it and found it to be filled with TUNA…….ewwwwwww.)

Finally getting back to Hikone around 7:45pm, I ran over to Al Plaza because I needed to visit the 100yen store as well as the kimono store where I special ordered some gaijin-sized tabi socks several weeks ago at which told I told them I would be back in 2 weeks to pick them up. Well its a little over two weeks now and I feel a little guilty, but I hadn’t had any other chance of picking then up. By the time I got there though, it was 10 minutes before they were going to close, and since I know how punctual that people are here, I figured I couldn’t do my shopping at the 100yen store and get the socks in 10 minutes time. So, I stopped at the McDonalds (3rd time was the charm!) and got some food to go. Then I peddled as fast as I could back to JCMU, hoping my food would still be hot once I got back. Once getting back I chowed down, and then sorted through the stuff I brought back from the shrine. I hung up my new arrow ema on the wall with all the rest of my ema. I have quite a collection going now.

At the entrance to the shrine, and a building inside the shrine for visitors:

The outer shrine, Geku. The first image is all you can see of the shrine behind a fence. The second picture is the identical space located next to the shrine where it will be rebuilt in 7 years:

Another shrine inside of Geku, and the approach to the inner shrine, Naiku:

The masses of people leading up to the inner shrine, and the only view of the inner shrine that you can get from behind the fence:

My pretty decorated wall as it is today, and the very cool arrow with ema that I picked up at Ise Shrine:

And as of New Year’s Eve, I finally completed the puzzle that I’ve been working on for almost a month. Its not so much that it took me the full month to do it, its more that I basically didn’t work on it for 2/3 of the month because of finals, speeches, and trips to Tokyo. But, here it is!: