Still in Ise

Saturday we woke up early-ish to get to the breakfast buffet and checked out of our hotel. The buffet was good, though I had really been hoping for some pancakes or something, and had a nice mixture of Japanese-style- (pickles, rice, miso soup) and American-style- (bacon, cereal, bread) breakfasts. After eating we piled back onto the bus to go to the actual shrines, Geku, the outer Ise shrine, and Naiku, the inner one, dedicated to the goddess Amaterasu. I had already been to both, and I’ve already described both here, so I won’t say much about the details. Geku was rather calm, but Naiku was a zoo. To pay one’s respects at the main shrine one had to wait in a large crowd of people of all ages, almost all of whom were Japanese or on the same trip as I. When I finally got to the shrine itself, I was about to toss my coin into the grate when I felt something small and solid smack me upside the head. I was, understandably I feel, rather confused, and at first couldn’t tell what had happened, did it fall from the sky? What was it? And then I looked down and saw a 10yen coin. I think that one of the small kids in line behind me, tired of waiting for their turn, felt that they could just throw their coin into the grate from where they were standing, and were mistaken. After regrouping and purchasing a charm for good luck, a friend and I struck out to find lunch and souvenirs. My friend had an apparently very nice beef and rice bowl, and I had one of the other regional specialties, sushi rice with sashimi on top, which was also amazingly tasty. The fish practically melted in my mouth and was not expensive at all. If the shrine had been crowded, though, the shopping area outside of it was much more so. It was very difficult to wade our way through the area in our search for gifts, but somehow we managed. The actual main Akafuku store that has been around since the early 18th century was in this area, and people waiting to buy the snack there formed a line that disappeared over the horizon of one of the area’s wooden bridges. We decided instead to get our other gifts and then find somewhere else to buy the requisite Akafuku. I wound up getting some shrimp crackers (another regional specialty) and the same brand of sake used in ritual offerings to Amaterasu at the shrine. On our way back towards the bus (there were some stops on the way for a tofu donut and a puff-pastry, mochi, red bean paste, and roasted chestnut pie-lette) we ran into some of the other students who had actually waited in the ridiculous Akafuku line, so I bought a box off of one of them for my host family. We stepped off of the main street for a bit to find another store that was selling the famous snack, where my friend bough a couple boxes and I bought a new Hello Kitty dressed as the Shinto goddess Ame no Uzume. We stopped for one more famous Ise treat, which was a sort of mochi-sandwich with roasted chestnuts in it and a cup of roasted tea, and then got on the bus and headed back. I slept most of the way, but I did wake up to play bingo, though I didn’t win anything. Now I’m happily back at my host family’s house and very ready for bed.
-According to my friend, because the kid threw the coin at me and not towards the goddess I’m the one who’s responsible for granting his wish. I say that if you are going to throw money at me, at least make it more than 10yen.
-While I’ve never seen anyone give more than 100yen at any other shrine, here I saw 1000 and 10,000yen bills (about $10 and $100 respectively).
-Apparently the mochi sold at the Akafuku main store were made that morning exactly, while the boxes sold in other, smaller, stores in the area are day-old, which in part explains the line.
-Capitalism works: I didn’t want to stand in line, but I was able to find someone who *was* to buy from.
-Hello Kitty does not appear to be allowed to be Amaterasu herself, but other goddesses appear to be fair game.
-I ate entirely to much on this vacation.
-I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but ‘sushi’ actually refers to the pickled rice, not the fish, which means that they sometimes here have ‘sushi’ that is basically a bowl of pickled rice with various toppings, which is what I had for lunch.
-They used to include a pretty picture in each box of Akafuku, but the one that I bought just had an apology from the president of the company about the freshness scandal.
-Akafuku are *extremely* sticky: I accidentally had the box perpendicular to the ground for about 3 hours, but when we opened it up they were still exactly in place. The box actually comes with a little wooden scraper to help remove them. They gave my host mother quite a fight.
-My host mother’s waka (traditional Japanese poetry that is chanted) group performed for the president of Croatia while he was in Kyoto this weekend.