Vacation 2011 Day 7 Into the Jebel Sahro

We were up early and headed off into the Jebel Sahro, the high country between the mighty Atlas Mopuntains and the Sahara Desert. The way took us past small farming villages and abandoned Kasbahs.

We travelled light as the mules carried everything we would need for the next 10 days.

I was so happy to be back in the desert, with rock underfoot and wide open vistas. This was my second time to the Jebel Sahro, but this time we were taking a different route, so some of the country would be new to me...

Occasionaly we followed rough 4-wheel drive tracks, but mostly we followed mule trails..

Every now and then we past a shop... there is no escaping Coca Cola......

In the middle of the afternoon we reached the place we would set up camp and stay the night.... actually "we" didnt set up camp, the muleteers set up camp, and cooked the food....

Kanzui matsuri

October means matsuri, and matsuri means kagura!! usually by the middle of October I have been to half a dozen all-night matsuris, but this year because Ive been spending a lot of time on Shikoku, when I am back home I have too much work to catch up with so matsuris have had to take a back seat. But last saturday I did go up into the mountains to Kanzui....

kanzui is actually only a few kilometers from my village as the crow flies. there used to be a path connecting the two villages, but it has not been walked for many, many years. By road its about 10 kilometers.

There is no "centre" to kanzui, no shops, its really just a scattering of mountainside farms along a narrow mountain valley. My kind of place.

I arrived about 10pm, and the dancing began a little later. At a usual matsuri the first dance is always a purification dance to purify the dance area in preparation of the kami to descend. usually this dance is the Shioharae, a ceremonial dance done without masks. Here at Kanzui the first dance was Akumabarai, a different type of exorcism/purification dance most commonly performed in the Bitchu area of Western Okayama and eastern Hiroshima.

It is danced by Sarutahiko, and consists of three sections. In the first video he is dancing with Gohei (wand) and fan. The objects carried by the dancers in kagura are called torimono, and traditionally they are objects through which the kami "enter" the dancers.

In the second video he dances with an Onibo, a "demon stick" usually carried by demons.

In the third video he dances with two swords. Ive read that in Bitchu kagura the sword dancing predominates and has developed into a wider variety of styles.

During the Edo period akumabarai would sometimes be danced at the head of a wedding procession to purify the road ahead .

disturbed at breakfast

Walking down Route 55 along the SE coast of Shikoku early one morning I disturbed a troop of monkeys in the trees along the roadside.

I guess there was about 30 in total. I stood still for a minute and gradually they reappeared and carried on with their breakfast.

Interesting stuff on the WWW

Here is a smattering of interesting sites and blogs Ive come across recently

Walking Through Japan is a blog being written by I believe a Swiss gentleman who is partway along a walk from the northern tip of Hokkaido down to the southern tip of Kyushu. The blog is in English but I think there is also a german and a japanese version.

Kyoto Gardens , not surprisingly, is about temple gardens in Kyoto. Whats nice about it is that one can "walk" through and around the gardens

Shimane Mask maker is a recent article from the Japan Times about yours truly....

Ex-SKF is a great site for anyone wanting to keep up with the news (and disinformation) about the ongoing nuclear crisis. The author is Japanese and he translates all the Japanese news articles as well as tweets and blogs from workers at the nuclear plant. Most importantly he "connects the dots" between the scattered bits of information coming out as well as offering his readings of the meaning......

Andante Photography is an Osaka based Japanese photographer. Simply good photos.

Jenna Pollard is a young woman over here for a year teaching English in local schools so her blog does cover Iwami and surrounding areas.

Iwami Travel Guide is written by students at the University in Hamada.

Enjoy

Manidera

Manidera is a mountain temple on Maniyama not far from Tottori City and the Tottori sand dunes.

Established on the top of the mountain in 834, it was later rebuilt a little lower.

 

After parking the car there is still a lot of steps to climb. The temple is one of 4 "special" temples of the Chugoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage, though it is not numbered. So really there are 37.

 

Hideyoshi destroyed the temple in the late 16th Century as part of his campaign against the local Mori Clan. Later when Tottori was established as a castle town the Daimyo rebuilt Manidera as the Kimon of the castle to protect the castle from the spiritually dangerous NE direction.

 

The Temple belongs to the Tendai sect, and the main enshrined deities are Senju Kannon, the thousand-armed Kannon, and Taishakuten, originally a Hindu deity that once incorporated into Buddhism is known as the commander of the Shitenno, the four heavenly kings.

 

The water flowing around the base of the statue of Kannon in the courtyard is known as healing water and people come from far and wide for it.

Whereas women were forbidden from entering many temples, ie Enryakuji on Mt Hie or Koyasan, women were allowed here so was particularly popular.

 

Partway u the stairway to the temple you pass through an impressive Niomon gate with guardian statues.

Nishinomiya Shrine

Nishinomiya Shrine is just outside the grounds of the Oasahiko Shrine near Bando in Tokushima, and is a massha of that shrine.

The kami enshrined is Amaterasu, and my guess is this shrine was created in the Meiji era as that is when many shrines to Amaterasu were created as part of State Shinto.

Amaterasu is often referred to as the highest of the kami, but that is more an ideological viewpoint rather than historical fact.

The two small komainu were very unusual....

Nio of Kunisaki

If you have been following my posts on the Kunisaki Peninsular in northern Kyushu then you will probably have realized by now that stone is predominant in the sacred art. Nio, the temple guardians, are almost always wooden, but it should not be surprising that in Kunisaki they are carved in stone.

Something else unusual is that whereas in the rest of Japan the Nio were removed from shrines during Shinbutsu Bunri, the seperation of Buddhas and Kamis, and were usually replaced with zuijin, but in Kunisaki they still remain at shrines as well as temples. These first two are at Kibe Shrine on the north coast.

These next couple are at Iwato-Ji, to my mind the most atmospheric of the many mountain temples dotted over the slopes of the conical peninsular. Notice the torii. The distinction between Buddhism and "Shinto" is blurred here, as it was everywhere in the pre-modern days.

These last two Nio were at the entrance to Monjusen-Ji, a little higher up in the mountains.

Matsue City

The design on the main manhole design in Matsue City is a view of Shiomi Nawate Street which runs along the moat to the north of Matsue Castle.

This was one of the areas around the castle where samurai lived, and it is now one of the most popular tourist sites in the city.

There are some shops and a restaurant or two....

And an old samurai house, complete with mannequins, that is open to the public...

Lafcadio Hearns former residence is also here and open to the public, as well as a small museum on him.

Meteor Plaza

Meteor Plaza is a complex located in Shichirui, a small coastal village now part of Mihonoseki which is now part of Matsue.

The complex includes a ferry terminal (for the Oki Islands), an auditorium, a seawater indoor swimming pool, and a museum.

The museum house the Mihonoseki Meteor which hit a village nearby in 1992. The cone of the building represents the meteors trajectory to earth, and the weird spheroid shape is modelled on the shape of the meteor itself.

The complex was designed by Shimane architect Shin Takamatsu and was opened in 1995

Ryozenji Temple 1 of the Shikoku Pilgrimage

Located in Naruto, not far from Tokushima City, Ryozenji is now classified as temple 1 on the pilgrimage route because it is located closest to the port where pilgrims from Kyoto/Osaka would arrive on Shikoku.

The name translates as Vulture Peak Temple, and according to the legend it was founded by the famous priest Gyogi in the 8th Century and visited by Kukai in the 9th Century.

Like most of the pilgrimage temples it belongs to the Shingon Sect. The main deity worshipped here is Sakyamuni, the historical Buddha.

The temple buildings date from 1964, and like many temples in eastern Shikoku is was destroyed by the warlord Chosokabe Motochika in the 16th Century and was burned down again in the late 19th Century.

I think most pilgrims start from here, and also quite a few return at the end of their pilgrimage to "close the circle". Also it is close enough to Tokushima that many people do a sample of the pilgrimage by walking the first half a dozen.

The temple has all the products and supplies you would need to do the pilgrimage.

The Niomon gate and the pagoda are particularly delightful. Like many of the temples there are dozens and dozens of statues of many Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and other deities.....