More glimpses of unfamiliar Japan

Past midnight and the inevitable Iwato was performed. It is one of my least favorite dances, but the last sequence after Amaterasu has...

Last saturday the villages of Matsukawa had their matsuris, so we started out in Tsuchi, home to one of the best kagura groups in the ...

Around 2:30am the kagura group took a break, something I have never seen before. I suspect that as the village has shrunk, so has the ...

For me, the month of October has to be "The Month Of Little Sleep". In our area the rice has been harvested and now it is ti...

Shimenawa, the ropes usually made of rice-straw though increasingly of plastic , are found in many places in Japan though typically at shr...

October Means Matsuri, Matsuri Means Kagura. It's that time of the year again......... apologies to any of you who don't like kagura...

Teono Shrine is situated atop a small hill, Honozan, between Izumo taisha and Inasa Beach. The 2 kami enshrined here are Taokihooi, a god of...

Our next matsuri was in Eno, a small village on the Yato River. This was our first time to matsuri here. It's a fairly new shrine, estab...

At least it does in my neck of the woods. We decided to head to the matsuri at Imada. Imada, like my village, is not a place you pass throug...

This is the smallest of all the Iwami Kagura masks and is the goddess Uzume. In the most well-known of the ancient Japanese myths, Iwato, it...