Not much happened today in the way of excitement, but after class a small group of us went to see the Nashinoki shrine, which was about 10 minutes’ walk from Doshisha and a stone’s throw from the grounds of the imperial palace. It’s not very old, as shrines go, having been built in the mid-19th century to honour faithful retainers of the Meiji Emperor, who famously made the slogan ‘Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians’. So, clearly, as a large group of barbarians we had to make a pilgrimage there. Just the weekend before the bush clover festival had been celebrated there, so the bushes were still hung with waka and haiku poems. The shrine is also famous for having a spring there that is one of about 3 freshwater springs in Kyoto, and even though the shrine as a whole was pretty much empty on a weekday afternoon, there was a line to use the spigot at the purifying station, with most of the people carrying big plastic bottles. I bought a small tea from the vending machine outside, drank the tea, and then filled it at the smaller tap that fills the basin that worshippers use to purify themselves. It’s currently in the refrigerator, and I’m not certain what to do with it now.
-Now I kind of want a shrine of my own, though I doubt that the emperor would so honour a foreigner, especially while she was still alive. It would be a cool one, though.
-I’m not certain that filling my bottle the way I did was polite, but there was another (Japanese) woman doing it so I did the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment