One day I was feeling rather frustrated after work and decided to take a drive to relax.
There’s a big torii gate standing over a bridge, so I decided to start there and check it out. On the other side of the bridge there was a little Buddhist/Shinto temple/shrine. It has a little path leading up to the shrine and some carved statues of The Seven Gods of Happiness.
After that I drove around a bit more and stumbled upon a little shrine called Nissai Shrine. This one had a long flight of stairs leading up to a little shrine. This one wasn’t amazingly impressive, but it was cute and small. If you stand with your back to the shrine you can see the tall torii gate spanning the bridge in the distance. I wasn’t able to take a picture of it at the time. Perhaps I’ll go back later and take one.
After that I accidentally hopped on a highway and headed south to Odaka, where I stumbled again upon a Shinto shrine called Masutamine-Jinja. This one had an impressive big torii gate and statues and little shrines all over the place. It also had a little pond with bridges and shrines on the other side of those bridges. There were frogs in the pond and they would hop away and startle me when I came to close to their section of pond. I’m interested in coming back sometime in the following year when the shrines are actually open and have events or something going on.
About a five minute drive from this shrine is Somakodaka Shrine in Odaka. This shrine is big, impressive and pretty. The pictures of it on Google Maps shows that it is beautiful in the springtime when the sakura trees begin to bloom. It also looks like there are “horse-wrestling” events at this shrine. I don’t know if anything is currently happening at these shrines (considering the fact that Odaka has been largely uninhabited for the last five years because of the tsunami and radiation) but hopefully it is good enough to start returning over the next year. There is also a little shrine called Tanabata shrine in the same area, as Somakodaka Shrine, but the sides of the area is overgrown and I was unable to get to Tanabata shrine. Again, maybe later this year.
It was starting to get late at this point and the sun was setting, so I decided to head home. I drove past this little cave in the side of a hill and I stopped to check it out. It was shallow but had a small hole stretching deeper into the hill. This hole seemed to be filled with small bowls and milk crates and it made me think someone was living in it, but again, I could definitely be wrong and it has a practical function that I’ve not thought about. That was all the courage I had regarding the cave and I got back in my car and drove about ten feet before I saw a small path going up the side of the hill that the cave was under. Curiosity got the better of me again, and I stopped my car and got out to ascend the path only to discover a little cemetery at the top. I still don’t know what a little cave is doing under a cemetery, but I am in no hurry to find out.
At that point I resolved to not stop anywhere else and to go home. On the way home I drove past another shrine, but I plan to return to that one on a different day.
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