Little Accident

I had a little accident yesterday where I did a nosedive on asphalt in Gonohe and lost a sizeable portion of the skin on my elbow due to friction when the street stopped my forward movement.

The japanese healthcare system is awesome though. 2 visits at surgeons including x-rays and bandage material plus prescribed medication where just about 200€. I'm quite sure that in Germany you can't even buy the (pretty high-tech) materials for that much.

The nurses couldn't speak english, but Google translate with speech to text translation mitigates that quite a bit. The doctors I saw were both quite fluent, so all in all no problems there.

Anyways. Although the painkillers work quite good I don't want to stress the arm too much and will continue in a few days.

April 12th - Just more insanity - Izumo to Kyoto

As I should have left out Hamada in favour of Izumo I should also have left out Kyoto in favour of Izumo and instead spend a full day on the train. But yeah, hello Captain Obvious with your phenomenal hindsight skill at god level.

I didn't, so I went to Kyoto. My original aim was to maybe visit something in the afternoon and then go on next morning to Kanazawa and have a bit of rest inbetween.

Well yeah. Kyoto sucks. Utterly. Salty donkey balls. It is so overcrowded beyond any remedy that Shibuya crossing looks like a relaxed and mostly dead village in comparison. You can already see dozens of temples and shrines from the train and I guess every single one of them is at its visitor limit. And that after coming from Izumo and its beautiful, serene and spiritual air. Horrible. Just horrible.

I just managed to throw my luggage into the (pretty good) hotel room and walk back to the station to eat something. That was that. I ignored the city and spent the rest of the evening reading.

Don't get me wrong. Kyoto is very probably a completely astounding and overwhelming city. Thatswhy so many people visit there. But unfortunately that destroys it for me. I simply cannot admire great architecture, history and art while being shoved around by 10000 organized travel groups with tour guides equipped with megaphones.

But the train ride itself was again impressive. The route goes from Izumo to Okayama by normal train and then by Shinkansen to Kyoto.

Farewell fro Izumo. The local mascot. Not as creepy as pedobear, but I see potential in those eyes.

I was meditating about the probably profound wisdom hidden in these words and the Satori hit me.
It was a piano, placed there to be free for all!

This worked suprisingly good.

Seats in a Shinkansen green car (1st class).

I love those houses with roofs over roofs which have side roofs and roofs..

I had it. Taste was not bad.

Hineji castle. At least saw it from the train.

Kyoto

Eatery in Kyoto station

I took the "Chef's selection of mixed skewers" and got this.
I am disappoint.
No livers, no hearts, no stomach, no tongue. Just boring meats and veggies.

At least the oysters were passable.

April 11th - Shit gets real: Izumo

Izumo was just a bit over an hour from Hamada, so I could actually do some planning and sightseeing that day, Weather was a bit better, but not brilliant, but at least only a very few drops of rain.

The train ride was not long, but definitely impressive

Riding in style

That was the ride. It was good. But this day had another location grabbing the trophy. Izumo Taisha. The Grand shrine of Izumo, It is one of the oldest if not THE oldest shrine in Japan and it is dedicated to Okuninushi no Okami,  the deity who created the land of Japan. Once a year, in the late autumn all 8 million(! someone counted) deities of japanese Shinto are said to gather in this shrine. More or less for a party.

The premises are very extensive, so you have to walk a bit from the bus stop.
Which is nice, since you can let the surroundings act on you to get a feeling for the place.

No idea what this is meant to be, but it looked nice.

The main walkway to the shrine.
In Shinto the middle lane is reserved for the gods, so humans have to walk either right or left.

The Torii gates are borders between the world of humans and the world of the gods. 

The atmosphere and smell were very calming.

I'm just a sucker for this kind of view.

Those rabbit statues were all over the place.

This is a statue of Okuninushi no Okami himself.

The whole ensemble.

We are getting nearer to the actual shrines.

This is not the actual main shrine but more or less a gateway, The access to the sanctum was unfortunately closed.
It seemed as if there was kind of a private event taking place.

I saw a documentation (I think it was on Netflix: origins of japanese style) where in one episode they showed how a number of 70-80 year old people produced these braids which in this size weigh metric tons. And they do it for free.

There is almost no shrine without these rice straw braids. 

This is one of two longhouses built specifically as accomodation for the gods when they gather in autumn. There are worse locations to crash after a party, eh?

View to the actual main shrines. They are build in a different, more archaic way.

This motive is repeated with a number of shrines in Izumo, The small "gatehouse" in front of the main shrine.

A ot of the mostly japanese visitors were deeply religious and prayed at almost every shrine. So you hear a lot of clapping hands. Combined with the drums and flutes of the (supposedly) private event there was quite the atmosphere.

After the temple I decided to visit the Izumo museum since it is not that far away. It is  a museum for the shrine and the genereal history of the region which goes back around 20.000 years for human settlements.

While wandering to the museum I stumbled over this awesome little stonegarden.

And then reached the museum itself.

This is a reconstruction of the original shrine. They found the foundation, which where 3m diameter wooden poles.

Reconstruction af a large number of ceremonial blades found in the region

And the originals.

A sample of one of the oldest iron blades found. The original is pretty well preserved and has layered steel. The reconstruction is plain and only meant to illustrate the size andform of the blade.

There was of course a LOT more in this museum and I have a lot more pictures, but since I start getting tired writing and reminiscing I think it is a too long post already for sure. So. CUT!