Shimane and Miyajima - 20th - 23rd September

A long weekend in September seemed like the perfect opportunity to check off another prefecture on my "to see" list. This time the destination was Shimane. Shimane is probably the least well known and least popular prefecture in all of Japan. A fact they are well aware of, as just recently they have introduced a new mascot of their prefecture - a sarcastic and grumpy looking guy called Yoshida-kun (Yoshida being one of the most common surnames in Japan). He is known to let people know that "Shimane is the 47th most popular prefecture in Japan" (Japan has 47 prefectures) and there are even tshirts saying "Shinane - the prefecture to the left of Tottori". Shimane knows it's not popular and so makes light of the fact, making it even better in my eyes!

Yoshida-kun

So why go there?!

First of all, I wanted to go to Shimane to see Izumo Taisha - one of the oldest and most important shrines in Japan. It is often considered the oldest even though there are no records of exactly when it was built, but it is known that it has been around since the early 700s! Wow. The main deity of this shrine is Okuninushi no Okami who is the deity of good relationships and marriage. When visitors goes to shrines in Japan, the clap twice when they pray. At Izumo Taisha, they clap four times - twice for themselves, and twice for their current or future partner. It was an extremely impressive building with a huge shimenawa (rope) at the entrance. It was also surrounded by beautiful nature, and it was a very pleasant stroll to get down to the shrine. I'm glad I read up about the shrine before I went there though - on the approach to the shrine there is a wide path. The path is split into three pathways by trees and visitors are asked to not walk down the central path as this is reserved for deities. I'm really happy I got to see this shrine as I heard about it a while ago from one of my eikaiwa students and thought it sounded great. It's still hard to grasp the concept that this shrine has been around for thousands of years, and that it is so old it was built before written records. Crazy.

Don't walk down the middle!

 

Although Izumo Taisha was the main reason for visiting Shimane, Todd and I figured we should see everything that Shimane had to offer  (which isn't much) seeing as we were making the four hour drive to get there. The first stop on our weekend was in the capital city - Matsue. There wasn't a lot to see in Matsue but the castle more than made up for this. It is one of only about a dozen original castles in Japan (most of the others being burnt down by accident or on purpose). There was interesting information written in English throughout the castle grounds which is actually pretty rare for a small city so that was definitely a pleasant surprise. The castle was made up of five floors starting with the cellar and well, up to the lookout fifth floor with a great view of the city. The castle was also surrounded by a very picturesque moat, and if we had had more time we would have been tempted to take a boat tour around the castle. Next to the castle is a preserved former samurai district, and there is a former residence that you can go and take a look around (which we did of course). Not as interesting as the castle, it was still fun to see how high-up samurais lived back in the day.

Matsue castle

Heading up inside the castle

View from the top of the castle

Samurai district

Former samurai residence

After our morning in Matsue, we got into the car and drove the hour to Izumo Taisha. The drive all around Shimane was great - there are two large lakes in the north of the prefecture which we got to drive around on the way to the shrine. There seemed to be an abundance of water in Shimane and it certainly made for a very beautiful drive wherever we were going. After the Shrine we headed south towards our final destination of the day - Iwami Ginza, an old silver mine.
Iwami Ginza was an extremely prominent silver mine in Japan that was mined for nearly 40 years. It has now been made into a World Heritage site. Unfortunately (as we should have realised), walking through an abandoned silver mine is pretty anticlimactic. It turned out to be just a tunnel through the rock that dripped on us. It was nice to get out of the sun for a bit, and the entrance looked pretty cool, but Todd and I were more than a little bit underwhelmed. The nicest part of the place was the bike ride down to the rental bike shop. That's right, we rented bikes to get there. Technically we didn't have to, but the information told us it would take at least 45 minutes to walk to but only 10-15 minutes to cycle. Seeing as we were on a tight schedule we opted for the bikes, and although it was quite a struggle going up to the mine, the surroundings were really pretty and it was really nice going for a bike ride with Todd. It was extremely refreshing when we got to coast back down the hill afterwards too. So not totally worth it, but still a nice stop off on our trip.

Entrance to the mine

In the mine

On our bikes

Here's where things started to go wrong though. A few minutes before we got to the car park for the mine, Todd and I heard a small banging sound. We both looked worried for a second, but then came to the conclusion that it was probably just a stone. The instant we concluded stone however was when an even louder popping sound was heard. Uh oh. I checked the gauges on the car and nothing seemed to be amiss, however as we were driving up the hill to the car park, my car made the rattling noise it made when my radiator broke before, and when I parked I looked up to see steam coming from the engine. I checked the temperature gauge, but again nothing seemed to be amiss. We popped the bonnet to take a look and were engulfed by a cloud of steam and confronted with a scene that looked like it had come out of some kind of sci-fi horror movie - green liquid everywhere! I checked all the levels and nothing seemed empty, we did notice a tube that looked like it had broken as it looked frayed. A kind man came over to see if we needed help and told us we would be ok to drive, but should head to a garage straight away. We let the car cool down whilst we went to see the mine, then started the car and headed to the nearest petrol station we could find - one only a few minutes down the road.

whoops.

Here begins our traumatic experience of trying to explain the problem in crapanese whilst the staff tried to help with their non-existent English skills. Over the course of three hours, we were eaten alive by mosquitoes, given coffee, given seats in the office, given bug cream for our bites, given many explanations in Japanese, and given a heart attack when we were told that we would probably have to get our car towed. That was when I started to panic. I don't have road-service cover over here and our hotel was over 2 hours away. Not only that, my home was over 5 hours away! No way in hell could I afford to get my car towed all the way there. I think the staff realised our despair at this point because they never stopped trying to get my car fixed. From the moment we got there, three different people were phoning various car shops around the area trying to get a replacement part for my car (it was a part of the radiator hose that had burst). They must have phoned at least 40 different people, all the while having to fill up the regular customers that came along. When we thought all hope was lost, a guy from a shop 30 minutes away said he had a part that could work! Thank god! Only an hour and a half later my car was ready for the road again (with a lot of suggestions that I probably shouldn't drive my car anymore). Thanks to my JTE who had translated via phone call a couple of times, we managed to get away and get to our hotel three hours later than expected, and only a couple of minutes before curfew, with minimal expense! Phew.

I had booked us a hotel in Tsuwano because of the nearby Inari shrine. The next morning we got up feeling slightly better than the night before, and headed out to check out Taikodani Inari shrine. If you have been reading my blog from the start (if you haven't I'm very disappointed in you!) then you would have seen my post about the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto. These shrines are very recognisable for the multiple vermillion gates stood together in a row. The Taikodani inari shrine is one of the five greatest inari shrines in Japan, built to protect the nearby castle against evil spirits. It was an impressive sight for sure. We started at the top shrine and walked out way down through the gates and back up again. It was very pretty and a really good start to the morning.

Then it was on to our last part of our weekend. We were leaving Shimane and heading back to Hiroshima, more specifically, we were going to Miyajima island. Again, if you have read my blog before you would have read (hopefully) my various posts on Miyajima. This would be my third time on the island so I decided to do something a little different to set it apart from the others. This time I booked us a room in a local ryokan so that we could stay on the island overnight and see what many other tourists never get a chance to see. We got on the island around lunch time and sat down for a quick lunch before heading out to explore. Because we have both been to Miyajima before, there was less of a need to sight see, and more of a desire to take it easy and relax. We strolled along the main tourist shopping street until we found our ryokan only a street behind the one we were on. We dropped off our bags and headed to Daisho-in Temple. We didn't stay there long but I made sure to show Todd the room that holds all the statues that represent each of the temples on Shikoku's 88 pilgrimage, with the ceiling covered in lanterns.

After this we went back to the ryokan to relax in our room before heading out again to go and see the large torii gate at sunset.

Our room for the night

 Apart from the clouds getting in the way, it was still an incredibly beautiful sight to behold and I'm really glad we got to take our time with it, watching the sun go down until we realised that we simply couldn't take any more photos. We had another quick walk down the shopping street before heading back to the ryokan for dinner.

And oh, what a dinner. Starting with duck, we had scallops in a basil sauce, sashimi, a fried vegetable cake thing, tempura, shabu shabu, pork fried in egg, soup, rice, all topped off with ice cream and a glass of apricot liquor. Delicious!
Feeling very stuffed we grabbed our cameras and forced ourselves back outside to go and take a few more pictures of the torii gate lit up. It was hard to take good photos but I'm so glad we got to see it lit up with far less tourists around it. After that it was back to the ryokan for a private Japanese bath and then relaxing in our rooms before we passed out.

Our private bath!

The next morning we were up with the intention of checking out one more site that was 40 minutes away. However, when we got back to my car we found that it wouldn't start so had to rely on even more kindness from complete strangers as they organised a jump for us. Sigh. That put the end to that plans, we decided to play it safe and head straight back home. It was a very stressful drive home, but we made it so that's the main thing. The next morning my car refused to start again, and it is still in the garage even now (I'm sorry little car) but it was a trooper in getting us to all the places we wanted to go on the weekend, and it got us home safely. I think Todd worked out we had driven some 500km so I'm not really surprised that my car died. I hope it hasn't gone for good though. Despite the car troubles I'm really glad I managed to go to Shimane and back to Miyajima. Having the car was definitely worth it and, ignoring all the stress with the car, I had an absolutely brilliant weekend.