Rise from the ashes

Finally, yesterday (for real this time) was Hiroshima. On the minus side, it's quite far away from Kyoto, and Hiroko was looking at the Nozomi (the uber-express service I can't use with my pass) timetable when advising me, so it took a good 3-4 hours to get there and I really didn't have much time for sightseeing. On the plus side, I got a couple of good photos out of the trip.

JR Group staff have been trying to catch Urahara Kisuke ever since the Ticket-Eating Hollow Incident of 2005, but somehow he just keeps evading them.

Japan's rail services are famous worldwide for their incredible efficiency and precision.

A misanthrope's dream come true. Possibly it is meant to function by contrast, but this bin was entirely on its own on the platform.

Having finally arrived in Hiroshima, and conscious of time, I used its remarkably fast and cheap tram service to head straight for the Genbaku-dome, formerly the Hiroshima Industrial Promotion Hall. A building right next to the hypocentre, the near-vertical way the blast hit it left a lot of the walls standing. Later, it was decided to preserve the building forever as a symbol of what had happened here.

First, though, a word about the city. What struck me most was how alive the place felt. The city's creed, soon to be explicated in the museums, was very obviously "rebuild and promote peace". It didn't feel at all dark or gloomy the way I thought a nonpareil disaster site might. It was, of course, also full of tourists.

Hiroshima: bright, shiny and modern. If I'd had time, I would have demonstrated this further.

I don't know if you can tell yet, but I like photographing rivers.

The dome itself. I was amazed by how much was still standing.

As you will see later, the number of surviving buildings like this near the hypocentre can be counted on one's hands.

Immediately across the river lies the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park. Wide, very pretty and fairly crowded. Notable locations include the Children's Peace Monument, built after the death of the famous Sadako Sasaki, a hibakusha (A-bomb survivor) as a baby, who developed leukemia at the age of 12. While in hospital, she folded over a thousand paper cranes in accordance with the tradition that a person who does so will get their wish granted. In the event, it didn't work and she died, but it inspired the creation of the monument, and made paper cranes a globally recognised symbol for peace.

The monument. The displays behind it are filled with an inconceivable number of paper cranes, sent by people from all over the world, including by many schools.

From there I moved on to the Cenotaph, which houses a list of all the (known) victims, and is currently a shrine of sorts. People were queueing to pay their respects. Incidentally, hibakusha are taken very seriously in Japan - it took a while to admit the difficulties they faced (in part because the Allied occupation suppressed as much information about the bomb's effects as it could), and even longer to get anywhere with the necessary medical research, but today, for example, hibakusha are entitled to automatic free medical care as well as free entry to many of the museums and interesting sites I visited. Mind you, there aren't all that many left now.

View of the cenotaph from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Trying to take a closer shot was difficult due to crowding.

Behind the cenotaph burns the Flame of Peace, which will only be extinguished when the world's last nuclear weapon is destroyed. Sentiments like these cause the optimist and the pessimist in me to clash head-on.

Thence the museum. In true expression of Hiroshima's intent to spread knowledge of the terror of nuclear weapons as far and wide as possible, the entry fee is a negligible one - about 30p (audio guides cost more to rent, but I was fine without one). Inside, the crowding is horrific, but the museum is very well-designed. Around the perimeter of the central hall, a series of displays narrate Hiroshima's history, though skipping quickly over stuff before the Meiji era, going through its gradual militarisation as a vitally positioned harbour, to its role in conflicts such as the Korean War, as well as WWII, all the way up to 8.15 am on August the 6th, 1945.

I have to say, I admire the honesty with which these displays were written. At no point do they shy away from Hiroshima's own role in promoting war and suffering across the world - they acknowledge, for example, that due to the wartime government's conscription policies, a full tenth of the workers killed in the blast were Koreans shipped to Hiroshima en masse to work as forced labourers (they even get a separate memorial in the park as a result). Equally, they explain in detail the role of military forces originally based here in mainland conflicts, without attempting to justify them. They even discuss the Rape of Nanking - both what really happened and what the Japanese at home were told - and quote different estimates of the total number of victims (including the total typically cited in China). That's more than some Japanese history textbooks do. Plus, they offer a great insight into what the Japan of the time was like, both ideologically and in day-to-day life.

This is even more true when we get to wartime Japan - rationing, kids being shipped off to live with relatives in the countryside, air raids and blackouts...There's a very deep and painful irony in the fact that America was doing the exact same thing to Japan as Germany was doing to Britain, with the same consequences, even as each side was busy demonising the other. That said, the Japanese government seems to have been rather less merciful towards its people than the British one - we hear of metal collection laws which stripped even religious objects, not to mention things needed for everyday use, as well as people's houses being demolished to make firebreaks against air raids. Fundamentally, though, and it's a pity that the museum doesn't have the scope to cover this, the similarities between civilian experiences greatly outweigh the differences.

Further on, the displays change to a discussion of three central questions: "Why did America develop the atomic bomb?" "Why was the atomic bomb used on Japan?" and "Why was Hiroshima chosen?" The museum does not disappoint here either, and offers candid explanations backed up by an amazing number of memos, minutes and similar documents drawn from US archives. I had no idea that Einstein had signed a letter to Roosevelt urging him to pursue nuclear weapons research (though another scientist, Szilard, had actually been the driving force behind it). Of course, in the event, Szilard and the other scientists lost control of their creation to the military, which brings me to the part I found really interesting - the ethics of the bomb being used.

Before, I had always considered that one bombing to be a good thing overall, purely because we know the Japanese government was prepared to sacrifice every last civilian and soldier in mainland warfare if that was how America had to end the war. So I thought the sacrifice of that one city had saved way more lives, and generally a lot of Japan. However...then we have the Potsdam Declaration, the demand for Japan to surrender, which justified nuclear bomb use when Japan refused. Two points stick out. First, the declaration made no promise to maintain the emperor system - which was known to be the key to surrender (and evidently not a hard concession to make, since they did maintain it after all). Second, no mention whatsoever of the bomb. To me, that's a sort of sticking point. If Roosevelt and company had wanted to, they could have achieved the same effect by giving Japan fair warning and even letting them evacuate the city of choice - the power of the bomb would still be obvious (what with no buildings left standing within miles), and it's not like Japan could have developed countermeasures as it tottered on the edge of defeat. But the minutes make it clear that the bomb had to be tested, in the real world and on real people - they wanted the data, and they were also desperate to prove that all that research funding had not been wasted. All those documents are chilling because they don't even consider the human cost - not "necessary sacrifice" or anything, just "how can we do this most efficiently?"

Hiroshima was chosen from a shortlist for being big, relevant to warfare, and containing no Allied prisoner camps. Said shortlist, too, is scary to read - these people actually considered bombing Kyoto, for example. Mind you, they'd already destroyed most of it in air raids, but still...As for poor Szilard, he drafted a petition not to use the bomb unless Japan was fully appraised of what it was in for and still refused to surrender. The petition and its 70 scientist signatories were ignored.

The centre of the main hall housed scale models of Hiroshima before and after, as well as panels showing a set of telegrams: the successive mayors of Hiroshima have sent telegrams protesting every single nuclear test to have taken place since the war.

Hiroshima, early morning.

Hiroshima, afternoon.

Some of the telegrams, pretty much ignored.

After that, there were displays on Hiroshima's reconstruction, and the long road to fully understanding what happened. Photos of the A-bomb aftermath, for example, were banned from newspapers by the occupation forces. What was remarkable was the speed with which they rebuilt, and the survivors' intense commitment, not to hatred or mourning (which, under the circumstances, would have been entirely understandable) but to making sure nothing like this ever happens again. "World peace" is a phrase ubiquitous in the area I visited, more emphatic even than the efforts to show how terrible nuclear weapons are.

That said, there were also some excellent displays on nuclear weapons worldwide, their nature, political significance, and the NGOs working to eliminate them (many founded here). Did you know that since WWII there have been over 20 accidents involving nuclear material (including lost nuclear missiles and accidental launches)? Or that there have been over 20 occasions on which the USA has seriously considered deploying atomic weapons? It is a source of some wonder to me that all manner of important people from governments across the world have visited Hiroshima and left behind their (very powerful) impressions, yet the world is still as it is and nuclear disarmament seems like a distant dream.

Nuclear disarmament map. Well, I guess we're halfway there.

Once again, a mixture of optimism and pessimism. Yes, there are people working hard to get rid of nuclear weapons. Amazingly hard. Hiroshima is a place of hope. But all it takes is a single Vladimir Putin, even before the nation has been whipped up into a nationalist frenzy, and the chances of global disarmament hit zero for another decade. In the August 6th 2009 address, of which copies were displayed, the mayor of Hiroshima spoke of Barrack Obama and hope for change (and used the agonising phrase "Obamajority"), but are people really going to become sensible enough without a fundamental change in human nature? I guess all I personally can do is hope that change comes before someone in power does something really stupid.

Anyway, after that and a few halls of physical remnants of the blast (most powerfully, tattered sets of children's clothes, and the individual stories of the people who had worn them that day), I left the museum with time for one more destination, the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims. I've been using Wikipedia to check the names because they all sound sort of similar.

The Hall's purpose is to remember those who perished in the explosion and its aftermath, and it conjures a fairly still, though not intense, atmosphere.

Overground: a clock frozen at 8.15.

Underground, another clock and a panorama of Hiroshima after the blast, as viewed from the hypocentre. It is made of 140,000 tiles, equal to the number of victims.

A screen cycles through countless names and photos. The victim list is also searchable using computers off to the left.

I made it as far as a display hall containing video and written testimonies of the day of the blast. They were vivid, and painted such intense scenes of human suffering that I didn't go through them all, and ultimately left without looking through the much more vast archive room (computerised) across the corridor. Collecting and disseminating survivor testimonies is apparently one of the key activities of the museum and this place, and as such they make many available free online.

In a way, the whole thing had been too much to take in. Stalin once said "one death is a tragedy - a million deaths is a statistic". It was a bit like that. You can't grasp that level of suffering and destruction without actually having been there - and, judging from the testimonies, even if you were there it's still too much. The best you can do is put together enough pieces that they start looking like a picture. But, in the face of all that, Hiroshima's current state is truly inspiring.

As for me, I didn't have time to see anything else, but had to rush back. Things taking way more time than Hiroko estimated, I ended up having a very eventful journey. There are three types of shinkansen trains: the elite Nozomi ("wish"), the slower super-express Hikari ("light") and the all-stations express Kodama ("echo"). In one journey, I'd been on them all. I got on the Nozomi, even though my JR Rail Pass doesn't cover it, because I was in a hurry to get back for dinner (they never start until everyone's present) and consulting the timetable revealed that an ordinary Hikari, with the necessary changeover, would leave me seriously late (and the Saitos were expecting guests, too, though in the event those didn't turn up until near midnight). However, upon getting on, I watched a conductor prowling around the area (though not actually checking tickets) and decided that it was going to be a pretty miserable journey if I had to spend it terrified of detection (though I did have elaborate contingency plans). So I got off at the next stop, Shin-Kobe. Where I learned that the only train coming anytime soon was a Kodama. It was going to Shin-Osaka, a popular station and the Nozomi's next stop as well, and I hoped that I could pick up a Hikari from another line there and beat my original intended train considerably. Which is what I did. (as an aside, Nozomi is just like Hikari on the inside, except with more specialised areas like smoking carriages - but the Kodama had really comfy seats). I spent the last leg of the journey, from Shin-Osaka to Kyoto, chatting to an Irish traveller.

As for today, I have decided to shift my one day off to now, because otherwise lack of sleep would really be too much (though in the event, Koron's barking for a lot of the morning got in the way - never have I felt as strong a desire to murder another living creature as when that dog assaults my eardrums) and because tomorrow I'll need to get up very early indeed to beat the crowds to Himeji. And now, I am caught up on my blog. Rejoice.

P.S. The one interesting thing I've done today is walk along Kyoto's Kamogawa River (thanks to a friend for the helpful tip). It is surprisingly peaceful given that it's running through the middle of the city, and filled with interesting life-forms which were entirely unphotographable (seriously, one bird of prey must be a vampire, because it doesn't appear on camera even when I point it directly at it), though my timing meant I had to go in the early-afternoon heat which was not conducive to anything much.

The quiet peace of Storm Mountain

On Saturday (yeah, until this backlog is cleared, I give up on using relative terms such as "yesterday"), I took up a certain invitation. When the family of one Yuri, who was studying with the same private tutor as Haruka, came to pick him up, his older sister, Rei, invited me to attend her practice of a tea ceremony with a teacher. Said event was late on Saturday morning. Rei lent me suitable white socks, and the teacher, a sprightly 80-year old woman, was very kind, explaining things, chatting, and even letting me off trying to sit Japanese-style (which even Japanese people struggle with for extended periods of time, never mind me; according to the Naruto anime, it can be used as punishment for unruly students).

As for the ceremony itself, it was highly precise. Rei, who performed it, had incredible concentration - she's been practising since she was little - and methodically performed every action with a sense of ritual, down to laying each utensil down in a specific way when it wasn't being used. There was a lot of bowing, as well. The tea itself was nothing special taste-wise, though the traditional Japanese sweets were great.

The storage shelf for various (far from all) tea ceremony tools. Photographed before the ceremony as I could do so without inconveniencing anyone.

Awesome traditional Japanese sweets. Note tatami floor and traditional electric kettle.

The takonoma. Upon entry, part of the ceremony is to look at and bow to the scroll and the flower. The scroll reads "mu-ichi-butsu", or "not one thing", i.e. "emptiness". There is probably some deep meaning in this, but though I'm fairly good with Buddhist void imagery (it was one of my best essays back in Oxford, too), I couldn't get any straight answers out of the teacher as to the ceremony's philosophical meaning.

The entrance. Note various decorations - the painting on the left was brought from the temple where the teacher's mother had studied the tea ceremony.

The house itself, by the way, is about 100 years old, but feels older inside.

Anyway, after the ceremony's conclusion (we went through it twice for me, then once more with Rei as a guest and the teacher officiating), Rei and I went for lunch. She kindly treated me to McDonalds, which was sort of odd given I hadn't eaten there for over a decade (first switching to their superior rival Burger King, then to healthy eating, then to vegetarianism). Incidentally, I hadn't realised their food varies between countries - Japanese ones are small, American ones are huge, French and Russian ones are foul. Such is the combined knowledge between myself and the Inoue family (Rei's).

Rei and I chatted - she'd done a year's study abroad in New York and wanted to practice her English, given the lack of opportunity here. I have to admit, it was really nice to have a flowing, two-way conversation with someone of my own generation for the first time in a while. Oh, and she let me have most of her chips because she was full, which was definitely a bonus. By the way, the "re" of "Rei" is an obscure kanji which means something like "the sound of tinkling jade". I don't think the Japanese get quite how lucky they are with their naming options.

Eventually, however, Hiroko arrived, and a little later Yuri, and we set off for nearby Arashiyama - "Storm Mountain", read literally (Rei, though, was due to perform at a piano concert with her mother, so didn't join us; have I mentioned how amazingly talented Japanese young people seem to be?). On the way, I talked a fair bit with Yuri - he's 15, but looks a fair bit older, and is intelligent enough that we conversed happily without worrying about the age gap. His interests include modern history and Russian, and he plans to be a jumbo jet pilot (his mother being a stewardess). He asked me many questions about Britain, and especially about how the British see Japan. I have to admit that I struggled a little with those, since the average Briton doesn't know very much about Japan (at least, of those I've met), whereas I've been taking an interest in it since I was about seventeen.

Finally, we arrived at Arashiyama and I was stunned. The sun-bathed scenery was gorgeous, to the point that trying to get it across in individual photos is like trying to describe a beautiful woman one body part at a time. The feel of the place was also very peaceful. I was totally in love, and part of me even wished I lived in a rural area like that (even though deep down I'm totally a city-dweller).

Arashiyama. Enough said.

A radiant shirasagi or white heron.

After admiring the view (a task made difficult, photography doubly so, by the fact that it's bad luck to look back on the famous main bridge), we proceeded to a very awesome exhibition hall called, I think, Shigure-ten (but the kanji had a rare reading, so I commit to nothing). The hall is dedicated to a famous Arashiyama-based anthology of 100 poems compiled in days of yore, but this is not what makes it special. What makes it special is this:

The main hall. Note, in the background, a total of 100 pillars, each with one of the anthology's poems described on them.

Upon entering the main hall, you are given a DS and 20 minutes. During those, you can walk on the floor depicted, which displays a live (or pre-recorded, but constantly updating) satellite view of Kyoto. You're walking over the Kyoto sky, and you can see cars moving and everything, and you can use the DS to zoom in on the area you're standing over, or summon a little animated bird which you can follow to any of a huge list of Kyoto landmarks. The experience is quite amazing. Also, periodically the map changes into a game where you have to find the right one of the 100 poems on the floor to match the one displayed on your DS. It's effectively a competition to see how many you can get before the screen reverts.

The spot-the-card game. The poem text is fairly illegible to me, being cursive style, so I used the much more helpful author portraits.

Follow the bird (they can sense your footsteps) to the destination of your choice. Trust the Japanese to make even that cute.

We were pressed for time, though, having a train booking, so only stayed for ten minutes. But we also saw a fun series of games where one challenges videos of the ancient authors of the poems in a traditional Japanese erudition/reflex competition. You get given the first half of one of the poems, and have to touch the corresponding second half (out of six cards) before the other person does. If you wait long enough, the relevant words will appear on the screen, but knowledgeable players can get a time advantage by recalling the second half from memory. Needless to say, I sucked (especially given that half the cards were upside down, and also that I kept forgetting to correct for right-to-left vertical column order), though Yuri was very good.

The video game. Of the authors, I must admit to recognising only Murasaki Shikibu, author of "The Tale of Genji" (argued by some to be the world's first novel). Worth noting, by the way, that the Heian Period's leading authors were all women.

Karuta, traditional Japanese playing cards (inspired by Portuguese travellers, I think). Did you know that the technology giant Nintendo started out as a humble maker of these during the Edo period?

A reproduction Heian court, complete with impressions of some of the anthology authors.

Sadly, we had to leave all too soon in the name of taking up our booking at the Sagano-Arashiyama "Romance Train". Far less tacky than it sounds, any romantic possibilities during the train ride stem solely from the incredible views one can share with a partner - in reality, it is nothing more or less than a scenic train ride (except for the oni). Once again, I may have to let the photos speak for themselves. Incidentally, I spent the journey one way taking pictures, and then the journey back relaxing and enjoying the landscape. They are different experiences.

The Romance Train. I could scarcely be less interested in trains, but I guess it was pretty.

A group photo, with Yuri in the middle. Train staff were scurrying back and forth trying to get people to pay for commemorative photos, but this one was taken by a kind neighbour.

The main draw of the Sagano-Arashiyama journey is that it runs vaguely parallel to the beautiful Hozu River.

More adventurous travellers could be seen paddling, kayaking and sailing downstream. Hiroko waved at them. They waved back.

An intermediate stop was lined with tanuki, Japanese racoon-dogs and famous mythical mischief-makers. Note their enormous testicles - these can be stretched to form a variety of useful tools up to and including a small tent. Combined with their shapeshifting powers and love of pranks, this makes tanuki somewhat of a pain to deal with.

A lanscape to die for. Yuri thinks he may have seen a bear prowling the banks, but it was inconclusive.

The oni. Ah, yes. The oni. He stomped through the carriages at one point, looking vigorously intimidating and evidently having fun with people's reactions. Notably, he periodically hid himself and the oni mask behind a smaller Hello Kitty mask to great effect (though I don't think it fooled anyone). One of the great regrets of my life is that I failed to take a photo of him doing this.

The journey's end. Over to the left lie vast stretching fields, with more hills visible on the horizon.

Like so, except prettier in real life.

But eventually the journey ended, and we were left in evening Arashiyama. We walked around for a while, investigating the draws of local snacks, and glancing into various local shops. Of note was a souvenir shop selling an enormous variety of music boxes (the Japanese use the Dutch loanword "orgel"). They played everything from "Fur Elise" to "Yesterday", and even some anime themes (I definitely saw "My Neighbour Totoro" and the new Ghibli film "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea", and also what might have been "Kanon").

A selection of "raw" music boxes, to be fitted with decorations before purchase as far as I can tell.

Entrance to one of Arashiyama's more famous temples, Tenryuji. Sadly, by the time we got off the train they were all closed - temples and shrines close horribly early around here. But the scenery was good.

"For those who wish their beauty to become a cherished memory. Right now."

A "pension" in this context is a kind of small hotel. Still, I admire the courage of those choosing to stay here.

For those of you who have just tuned in, do not change channels - I'm writing this from a net cafe on my last day off, so another post is to follow shortly.

The Invisible Sun

Before we begin, one just for Naruto fans.

Itachi's cunning plan of invading Konoha using a newly-designed mobile hideout was sadly foiled by his complete lack of naming sense.

Yesterday was the day of my visit to Ise Jingu, Japan's holiest and most important shrine. It has been rebuilt from scratch as a perfect replica every 20 years for over a thousand years. It's divided into two, an inner shrine housing Amaterasu, goddess of the Sun, supreme divinity and patroness/progenitor of the imperial line, and a nearly identical outer shrine housing Toyouke, god of food, clothing and shelter who is also responsible for offering food up to Amaterasu (so daily food offerings are made to him first). Overall, it was pretty underwhelming, primarily because both shrines are considered way too holy to be seen by all but a few select priests, so all we get to see are the outer, least significant buildings plus an exciting variety of fences.

After trekking through the rather drab Ise City, I came to the outer shrine and experienced all this for myself.

The torii leading to Geku or the outer shrine. Another that's "oldest of its type". Note the holy sakaki branches attached to it - these are renewed every ten days.

About 50% of everything in the area is surrounded by white-marked ropes indicating an object inhabited by a kami. One wonders if holiness spreads by proximity, like spiritual power in the Bleach manga/anime.

Not everyone looks up, but frankly the man-made glories of the shrine are dwarfed by those of the forest it is set within.

As I say. The best thing about Ise is that even if you can't see the shrine, there's some remarkable scenery.

The hills of Ise, sadly inaccessible to travellers.

Frankly, I was feeling in a surprisingly sceptical mood that day, and consider the principle of "too holy to see" pretty dubious. I mean, either an object/location's holiness is in the eye of the beholder, or it isn't. If it isn't, then surely no amount of impure gazes could in the least diminish Amaterasu's glory. If it is, then what are they bothering to protect so hard? However impure the gaze of one pilgrim, it will not harm another's connection with the divinity. I know, I know, that's too logical for your typical priesthood. But I'd think masters of Shinto of all faiths would get that holiness can be and is found everywhere, rather than being something you lock up out of harm's way. (and don't even get me started on the contradiction of trying to hide the Sun Goddess, especially since Japanese myth has precedent for how it's a bad idea)

Now I think of it, maybe the shrine is off limits because the priests know there's nothing they can show believers that will even approximate Amaterasu's glory - the same way as the Three Sacred Treasures of Japan are never shown to ordinary people and may not actually exist.

At any rate, shrine-wise there was a certain amount of consolation in that various attendant gods have their own shrines on the premises, and these are small-scale replicas of the real thing (though they're one building each; I'm pretty sure more than that is concealed behind the fences).

Lesser shrine, tourist's eye-view.

Lesser shrine, photographer's eye view. The simple construction is somehow appealing, notably in a way that Kasuga Taisha's ancient architecture wasn't.

Oddly, it's actually not that hard to believe that a spirit dwells behind this gate. It has a certain eerie quality to it.

The holy giant spiders of Ise say hi. What? If so many random rocks around here are holy by proxy, what to say of a living creature that has inhabited the shrine from birth?

This stall on the shrine grounds sells many charms etc. (notably more expensive than any other shrine I've seen), but also these household worship-your-own-deity shrines. Such things are pretty standard in Japan (though neither of my homestay families has one). Higurashi no Naku Koro ni fans may note that some are referred to as "yashiro" - if one were to be very respectful, "o-yashiro sama".

At any rate, having been duly underwhelmed, I moved on to Naiku, the inner shrine, via a bus. However, before going in, I spied a street leading away which seemed filled with big souvenir shops and interesting pseudo-traditional things. Since I had one souvenir left to purchase (and a very hard one at that - it's tricky looking for "cute things" when you despise the very concept of an object made for pure cuteness), I veered in that general direction.

I did get my souvenir eventually, but before that, I learned something interesting upon inquiring of some shopkeepers why the place was full of toy owls. Apparently, there are no less than three different puns on the Japanese for "owl" which render it a lucky charm.

Explanatory sign of incredible usefulness - though given this stuff was all aimed at tourists, I'm surprised at the total lack of English.

As the above explains, "Fukurou" can be read as

a) Fu-ku-rou, "lack-of-hardship", which makes it a protective charm against suffering

b) Fuku-rou, "blessing-bright/cheerful", which makes it a charm to keep hold of luck. (see post comments)

c) Fuku-rou, "blessing-old-age", which makes it a charm for being happy as the years pass.

Having drawn upon the wisdom of the owl, I decided to go for lunch. Looking around, I found an udon place promising "Ise Udon". Since it sounded like something I might not be able to get elsewhere, and vegetarian to boot, I decided to go for it. Incidentally, I will forever and ever be grateful to the waitress there, the first person in Japan to treat me exactly right linguistically. I could see her thinking as she chose her words, and in the event she explained what Ise Udon was in simple Japanese which I completely understood without feeling patronised. If you don't get why this is a big deal, compare today's train station guard, who looked at my JR Pass and just repeated "JR no no no no no" at me in English, in spite of my attempts to question him in Japanese, until I realised on my own that I was at the subway entrance rather than the JR Line entrance, and worked out where I was meant to go based on hanging signs.

Ise Udon, characterised by very thick noodles and enough soy sauce to conflagrate a small elephant (yes, I know soy sauce doesn't burn, but when you have this much of it, it starts to bend the laws of physics). In the event, I actually didn't like the taste much.

Ah, well. It was an experience at any rate. I moved on to Naiku after thanking the waitress (she seemed happy about it).

The approach to Naiku, very scenic and generally prettier than this lame camerawork makes it look.

Chickens, the deer of Naiku. Seriously, why?

Chickens, plural view. So so many, though admittedly concentrated in a fairly limited area.

This little river has traditionally been a place for pilgrims to purify themselves before entering the shrine. I'm not sure how this meshes with all the "do not enter the river" signs. It's really shallow, by the way, and further downstream looks like a garbage-polluted river without the garbage.

Awesome cypress trees, still mocking human efforts at making something impressive.

Approach to Naiku proper. Photos may only be taken from the base of the staircase...

...but that's why the gods gave us zoom functions. Not that there's much to see either way.

Finally, a cool little bridge. I'm pretty sure it's another famous site of sorts, but it doesn't seem to lead anywhere in particular.

So yeah. I spent a day looking at shrines I couldn't see. I wonder what goes through the minds of pilgrims who travel long distances just to stand in front of a white curtain and a row of fences. Granted, true faith disregards physical obstacles to a connection with a divine, but that sort of begs the question of "why come here in the first place?" If any deity has a claim to omnipresence in relation to humans, surely it's the sun goddess and the god of food, clothing and shelter. Ah, well. I may just have to accept that I don't understand these people. Like Paulo Coelho says, "in order to follow his path, the warrior does not need to prove that someone else's path is wrong".

Small pond just outside the shrine, bonus shot A: the Koi of Kamouflage.

Bonus shot B: the Koi of Konspicuousness.

Bonus shot C: the Koi of Konflagration.