Museum Hopper

After we visited the Geku, we hopped on a bus to Naiku , also known as Ise-Jingu or simply Jinga.  All other Shinto shrines in Japan are known as XX Jingu,  This one is simple Jingu -- the ultimate. Like all great shrines, this one had a magnificent wall of sake barrels.   This ended up being the Christmas card photo! This shrine was even larger than the outer shrine and we spent quite some time wondering from shrine to shrine.  The bridge into the shrine was beautiful.  We wish we had known what the flags represented/said. From these photos, you can see the crowds of people at the main shrine.   We thoroughly enjoyed our time here.  It was something to see the most holiest place for Shintos. Time at shrine: 1.5 hr Times visited: 1 Overall: A-

Our first stop in Ise was the Geku , or outer shrine of the Ise Shinto Shrine.  This is the second most sacred location.  We ended up with a gorgeous day although it did turn rather warm! This shrine is about a 15 minute walk from the Ise train station. I am going to cover a few things in this post that are also applicable to the Geku shrine.  The main shrine building gets rebuilt every twenty years with all new materials.  You can see next to the temple the place that it was before.  It has been rebuilt 62 times making the shrine 1240 years old, founded in 4 BCE.  No photographs are allowed within the area of the main shrine at both shrines.  The style of these two shrines is very different from the other shrines we visited -- they both were built pre-interaction with other cultures (like China and Korea).   The main shrine within Geku -- this was the closest photograph I could take All these structures get rebuilt every twenty ...

I knew when we were headed to the Ise Peninsula that I just had to get to the Futami-Okitama shrine as well!  It is the home of the "married rocks," a shrine to married couples and bliss.   We took a bus from the Inner Shrine, Naiku, to the shrine.  It was so easy -- only about a 15 minute bus ride.  We then caught the train back from here, so it was a really easy day and we covered a bit of ground. The rocks are really not that large -- probably only about 10-15 feet high.  Here is a picture with us in it for comparison This does seem to be one of the most famous spots in Japan at least for photographs.  It is definitely more challenging to get to them Miyajima, but maybe not by much.  From Kyoto, we got to Kyoto station and took a shinkasen.  We then transferred to a local train to end up at Ise (but we could have continued on the train to end up here).    Other than the rocks, this was a relatively quick visit!...