The Adventure of the Hidden Jinja
Ok, because there were loud demands coming from CERTAIN people... here it finally is.
(Please keep in mind that at this point, we'd only been in Japan for 2 days and were still going *_________* OMFG THIS TOTALLY LOOKS LIKE JAPAN at everything.)
So on this certain day, we were in my room and looked out the window. And suddenly, I saw something that... looked suspiciously like a gate to a shrine (jinja) or a temple (o-tera) or something else Japanese and cool.
And we were all OMFG LET'S GO!! even though it was raining. You see, we were young and impressionable.
So up the road we went! And went down a little path...
And arrived HERE!
OMFG IT'S A JINJA!! we said to each other, and ran off to do jinja-y things.
Like wash our hands in the sacred water.
And donate a little small change to the jinja so we can take one of those little oracle papers (Omikuji - thanks, lottiechan!!) and put them on the tree.
We actually took the papers home with us first to translate them so we'd understand what kind of wishes we were making to the kami-sama and then brought them back about an hour later. X"D
And of course, we took shitloads of pictures.
Then, we decided to find our way back home taking the path that led through the main gate of the jinja.
As you can clearly see, there was lots and lots of nature around us, even though we were just about 150 meters away from the neighbourhood streets. None the less, when we looked to our right, we first saw a little bamboo forest (that none of us was able to take decent pictures of) and then a pond. And in the pond, we saw something moving. And when we looked closer, it was actually some kind of snake! "Woah!", we said to each other. "Japan is pretty wild!"
Picture of pond without snake, sadly. :(
There were also tons of monster-spiders everywhere, which we were mightily impressed of. By now we know that these spiders are seriously everywhere and we stopped being fascinated and just hope that we won't have one of them in our room someday. (Actually, Annika HAD one in her room today. Only she's a lot braver than me and managed to move it out of the room without killing it. I couldn't have done that. I'd have simply taken the vacuum cleaner and gotten rid of it ASAP.)
On our way home through the neighbourhood, we also confirmed something that all of us are already aware of: The Japanese like things pretty. Even things that are the opposite of pretty by nature. Like sewer man holes.
おわり
Note: All the photos without a time stamp on them were taken from Annika's journal at seta_kaita
(Please keep in mind that at this point, we'd only been in Japan for 2 days and were still going *_________* OMFG THIS TOTALLY LOOKS LIKE JAPAN at everything.)
So on this certain day, we were in my room and looked out the window. And suddenly, I saw something that... looked suspiciously like a gate to a shrine (jinja) or a temple (o-tera) or something else Japanese and cool.
And we were all OMFG LET'S GO!! even though it was raining. You see, we were young and impressionable.
So up the road we went! And went down a little path...
And arrived HERE!
OMFG IT'S A JINJA!! we said to each other, and ran off to do jinja-y things.
Like wash our hands in the sacred water.
And donate a little small change to the jinja so we can take one of those little oracle papers (Omikuji - thanks, lottiechan!!) and put them on the tree.
We actually took the papers home with us first to translate them so we'd understand what kind of wishes we were making to the kami-sama and then brought them back about an hour later. X"D
And of course, we took shitloads of pictures.
Then, we decided to find our way back home taking the path that led through the main gate of the jinja.
As you can clearly see, there was lots and lots of nature around us, even though we were just about 150 meters away from the neighbourhood streets. None the less, when we looked to our right, we first saw a little bamboo forest (that none of us was able to take decent pictures of) and then a pond. And in the pond, we saw something moving. And when we looked closer, it was actually some kind of snake! "Woah!", we said to each other. "Japan is pretty wild!"
Picture of pond without snake, sadly. :(
There were also tons of monster-spiders everywhere, which we were mightily impressed of. By now we know that these spiders are seriously everywhere and we stopped being fascinated and just hope that we won't have one of them in our room someday. (Actually, Annika HAD one in her room today. Only she's a lot braver than me and managed to move it out of the room without killing it. I couldn't have done that. I'd have simply taken the vacuum cleaner and gotten rid of it ASAP.)
On our way home through the neighbourhood, we also confirmed something that all of us are already aware of: The Japanese like things pretty. Even things that are the opposite of pretty by nature. Like sewer man holes.
おわり
Note: All the photos without a time stamp on them were taken from Annika's journal at seta_kaita