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!