More glimpses of unfamiliar Japan

  Yamata no Orochi is a mythical serpent with 8 heads that appears in the Izumo cycle of ancient Japanese myths set in the time before the d...

Japan Guide Rather than Komainu, Lion-Dogs, Yakumo Shrine in downtown Izumo City is guarded by a pair of what appear to be dragons. Yakumo S...

Yaguchi Shrine has no particularly distinctive features, and yet is listed in both the Izumo Fudoki and Engi Shiki. Yaguchi means &qu...

Known as the Land of Myth, Izumo has many myths recorded in the earliest chronicles, and probably the most well known is the story of ...

The eighth, and what turned out to be the last, matsuri for me in October was at Sano, a village up in the mountains behind Hamada. It was m...

We headed downriver to Matsukawa, the village of Oda, who have their matsuri during the daytime. The village no longer has its own kagura gr...

These are 2 of my versions of the Ashinazuchi mask. Ashinazuchi, most commonly translated as "foot stroking elder", was the husban...