Ise Shrine

For those of you who don't have facebook, here are our pictures from Ise!

There is a road of traditional shops leading up toward the gardens surrounding the shrine. Ise shrine is dedicated to the goddess Amaterasu Omikami, and is said to contain the Sacred Mirror used to lure her out of a cave. This is one of the most famous and important shrines, and, perhaps due to the possible posssession of the mirror, highly inaccessable.

Taiko Drumming

Chad drinking delicious milk from an old-fashioned milk bottle (the bottle became a souvenir...). He is next to a maneki neko (a lucky cat).

Chad, me, and our friend Mia (a coworker).

There was a really neat tobacco store. Chad bought some matches made out of old playing card boxes. These types of playing cards used to only be used by Yakuza (a picture of the matches, later). Here, Chad is smoking out of an old-time pipe. For 100 yen, he got a nice little smoke session.

More lucky cats!

The top of the building near the tobacco store.

Sardines, smoked and then fried. I don't know why, but I always thought sardines would be really gross. At many of the shops lining the road toward Ise Shrine, they had free samples, and to my surprise, the Sardine sample was DELICIOUS. Chad, who often doesn't care for fish, said it was the best he's ever had.

Here's the guy who was making the sardines. He was smoking a cigarette at the same time, which is kind of funny.

A sake shop.

These are specialty kinds of fish cakes, served hot.

Chad and Mia are eating the Cheesy Fish Cakes. Maybe that sounds gross.

...

It's not.

Chad really wanted to buy one of these hats before we leave Japan. He wasn't joking--yesterday he bought one when we were in Iga (and so did the rest of us! More on that trip soon).

Chad loved these roosters.

The Japanese flag, soaring high above the trees.

Mia is teaching me the proper way: you only scoop water once. Then, you wash your left hand, then your right, and then tip the cup up so it washes the handle of the cup.

The stairs leading up to the shrine. Actually, only the priests and the prince and princess, etc., are allowed to go in the shrine. Everyone else can walk up to the top to pray. You usually throw in 5 yen, or go en, which also means luck. Then, you clap your hands twice, bow, pray, and then bow again before leaving.

Loads of giant koi! Some of them were close to 2 feet long! There were some amazing colors, but it was difficult to capture much with the camera we were using.

The roosters...in a tree.

There are beautiful gardens all around the shrine. On New Year's Eve, the prince and princess of Japan come to Ise Shrine and walk through these same gardens.


We wanted to take a picture of these neat floral arrangements for some greenhouse owners we know ;-)

MMM! Dango, or Japanese dumplings, made of sticky rice. These ones were soy sauce flavored. If you've ever watched Samurai Champloo, the characters eat these all the time. Delicious!

The view out the window from where we were sitting in a famous restaurant in Ise.

The restaurant is famous for its fresh, raw tuna. Chad and I both ordered a set. It was SOOOOOOOOOO good!

Finally!

Well, we finally got our internet and its nice to talk to people after what seems like months. Training is going well, though very tiring. We have a hour and a half commute to our training school (one way) as well as demonstrations at least once a day that we need to prepare. Our apartment is pretty sweet and is about twice as big as I feared it was going to be. We have cooked a bit at home, but have also been going to a lot of ramen shops, udon shops and other neat restaurants (everything is delicious!). We also checked out a kaiten sushi restaurant in which sushi comes around on conveyor belts and you just grab whatever you want to try. The sushi comes on different plates, and each color costs a different price (usually between 100 and 500 yen). At the end, they count your plates and you pay.

We were able to check out a short taiko drumming presentation the other day on our way to work which was really neat. Though they were amateurs, they were extremely good. It appeared to be some competition that lasted all day, so we were kind of bummed that we had to go to training. We went to our first izakaya (the Japanese equivalent to a pub or a bar) on Thursday and that was also quite the experience. I was quite uncomfortable the entire time because the tables are made for short Japanese legs which I do not have (one of the waitresses commented "Oh, nagai ashi!," which means, "Long legs!," when she saw me trying to fit). Luckily they had some amazing chicken wings. Yokkaichi (where we are living) is pretty sweet too, though people are NOT used to gaijin (foreigners) at all. As they drive/walk/bike by they stare like we are doing something outrageous. Today when we were walking back from getting groceries two girls ran into Caitlyn on their bike because they were kind of staring at me. It was funny.

Now I am going to attempt to post some pictures of our apartment and things around Yokkaichi.

5 minutes later: Awesome I just deleted all of the pictures. Well, we should have some up soon.

Toodaloo,
Chad and Caitlyn