Kojiki (part four)

Kojiki (part four): Susanoo actually does something kind of useful for once

Previously on the Kojiki, Susanoo got thrown out for being a poop-flinging jerk.

There's then a chapter which probably was just randomly thrown into the Kojiki.  It's the killing-the-food-kami story I wrote about here, except instead of Tsukiyomi doing the killing, it's Susanoo.  Basically, Susanoo showed up at Ukemochinokami's house, asked for food, and Ukemochinokami started pulling food out of her nose, mouth, and rectum.  Yum.  Susanoo was pretty understandably grossed out and stabbed her.  Her corpse then turned into various kinds of food, which one of the kami took and used as seeds.
The Tsukiyomi version of the story, by the way, is the one which appears in the Nihon Shoki.  Some scholars believe that Susanoo wasn't actually involved in the original story, but the author decided to make him the one to kill Ukemochinokami in order to reinforce his violent and dangerous nature.  There's actually a version of the story where nobody gets killed, and the food-producing kami just dies of old age!  But dying quietly of old age is so BORING compared to STABBING, and also doesn't involve pulling food out of one's rectum.

So, anyway, once Susanoo was done senselessly killing people, he descended to Izumo.  Yes, that Izumo.  He saw a chopstick floating down the river, and figured that there must be people upstream, so he went to look for them.  Sure enough, he found an old woman and an old man with a young woman.  All of them were crying.
Susanoo asked what was wrong, and the old guy replied that he used to have eight daughters, but the eight-tailed* dragon, whose name was Yamato no Orochi,**  had come every year to eat one of them, and now he was down to the last one.
Susanoo then asked what the dragon looked like, because apparently "eight-tailed" wasn't sufficiently descriptive.
The old man then gave a description, which involved a lot of renditions of "eight" (the dragon has eight tails and eight heads and spans eight valleys AND eight mountain peaks).
Then Susanoo asked, "Will you give me your daughter?"
The old man answered, "Awed as I am, I do not know your name."
And Susanoo replied that he was Amaterasu's brother, conveniently leaving out the whole part where she threw him out and kind of disowned him.
And apparently this was good enough for the old man, 'cause he gave Susanoo his daughter...who Susanoo then turned into a hair comb and inserted into his hair bunch.
UH.  Right-o.
So then Susanoo told the old man and old woman to distill "thick wine of eight-fold brewings," which is apparently a special kind of wine that is used in religious ceremonies.  He then told them to build a fence with eight openings in it, and place a barrel of the wine at each of the doors and wait.
You probably already know where this is going.
So they did as Susanoo said, and the dragon showed up and drank from the barrels and got drunk and passed out.  And then Susanoo hacked the dragon into pieces with his sword, and the river flowed red with the dragon's blood!  But when he cut the dragon's middle tail, his sword broke.  He inspected the tail and discovered that there was a sword inside the tail.  He took the sword and presented it to Amaterasu, which, if you think about it, doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since he just got thrown out for flinging poop around her house.  Some scholars think the whole bit with him presenting the sword to Amaterasu is just tacked on to the regular story, but nobody really knows!  Anyway, the sword was Kusanagi, which doesn't mean anything to most of you, but will become important later!

In the children's version of the Kojiki I'm reading, Susanoo then pulls out all his body hair and throws it into the wind, where it turns into a bunch of different kinds of trees!
If you were wondering, his butt hair turns into maki, which my dictionary informs me means "yew plum pines."
He then announces what each of the trees will be used for!  The butt-hair trees are supposed to be used for making things for living in this world, which I guess means implements for daily use?
Then Susanoo pulls out his hair comb and announces that it will be his wife, and the hair comb turns back into a lady.  And apparently the lady is so calm and nice that she stops Susanoo from being such a hot-headed poop-flinger, which I guess is a good thing!

Note that none of this section is actually in the original Kojiki, which continues the story this way:
Susanoo picked a place in Izumo to build his wedding palace, and apparently was so thrilled with building his palace that he decided to sing.
I bet you didn't think this was a musical, huh?
Anyway, his song is about how he's going to have a many-fenced palace and live in it with his wife.  That is literally the entire song.
So then he called over the old man and asked him to be his headman, and then commenced procreation with his wife...who, by the way, in this text, is still a comb.  Oops.
And then there's a full page listing all his descendants and that's the end of the chapter!

On a final semi-related note, Jason, who was my classmate at Brown AND on CLS and is now working as a CIR in Shimane Prefecture, went to see a kagura performance of the tale of Susanoo and Yamata no Orochi.  You can click here for a picture.

Next time: Ookuninushi discovers that if you tick off your bros, they may kill you...a lot.

*It's worth noting, once again, that "eight" may actually mean "a lot" in this context.

**If you've ever seen or read Naruto, Orochimaru is based off of Yamato no Orochi.

Kojiki (part three)

Academic post #9

Kojiki (part three): No matter how bad your brother is, he could actually be worse

So where we left off last time, Izanagi got sick of Susanoo's temper tantrums and told him to get lost.  Susanoo was going to visit his sister, Amaterasu, to say bye.

Susanoo, however, couldn't just go visit his sister normally, so instead, when he ascended to heaven, he made a huge amount of noise and shook the entire Earth.
Amaterasu heard him coming and said, "Oh, great, now my brother is coming to usurp my lands!"  She then tied her hair up and put on her gear to get ready to go to war with her brother the usurper.
When Susanoo finally showed up, he swore that he had only come to say goodbye to his sister, but Amaterasu didn't believe him.  Finally, Susanoo said he would show his pure intentions...by bearing children.
Yup.
So they stood on opposite sides of a river,* and Amaterasu took Susanoo's sword, broke it into pieces, washed the pieces in the heavenly well,** and then chewed them up and spat them out.  They turned into a bunch of female kami.  Then Susanoo took the beads wrapping up Amaterasu's hair and arms and did the same. They turned into a bunch of male kami.  Then Amaterasu said, "The kami born from my possessions are my children and the kami born from your possessions are your children," and then there's a long section no one cares about where they talk about where each of the kami is now enshrined.
Then Susanoo said, "Clearly I had girls because my intentions were pure so HA."  And then he "raged with victory," beginning the section I like to call "Oh Geez, And You Thought Your Little Brother Was a Pain."
First Susanoo destroyed Amaterasu's rice paddies.
Amaterasu, apparently afraid to misjudge her brother again, made all kinds of excuses for him.  "He probably doesn't understand agriculture!" she said.  "He probably thought we were using the land wastefully and was trying to help!"
Then Susanoo pooped in her festival hall and threw the poop around.
"He's probably drunk!" Amaterasu argued.  "We probably just think he's flinging around poop.  He's probably actually projectile vomiting everywhere."***
But then Susanoo skinned the heavenly dappled pony backward**** and dropped it through Amaterasu's weaving hall roof.  The weaving maiden inside was so surprised that she struck her shuttle against her genitals and died.
Amaterasu suddenly realized that Susanoo actually was being a horrible brother and ran away and hid in a cave, which was a problem, because she was the sun goddess.
DUN DUN DUN.

Suddenly, it was night all the time!  Calamities were happening all over the place!  All the kami had a meeting to figure out what they should do.  Then there's a long section where they talk about all the preparations they went through, which include divination with the shoulder bone of a male deer, gathering a bunch of roosters, and making a mirror and some beads.
Then Ame-no-uzume did a dance, stamped on a bucket, and then "became divinely possessed, exposed her breasts, and pushed her skirt-band down to her genitals" (page 84).
And all the kami laughed.

Just to break some of the weirdness of this whole scene, there is a good pretty explanation for everything going on!  Ame-no-uzume's dance is a kind of spirit possession, and in spirit possession, exposing the genitals is a way to ward off evil spirits.  It's also a way to show that you're actually possessed, since you wouldn't normally flash everyone if you weren't.*****  Also, laughter was used in ceremonies to increase the power of the kami.  So it's not just Ame-no-uzume flashing everyone!  It's Ame-no-uzume flashing everyone FOR A REASON.

Anyway, Amaterasu was (understandably) very confused.  She thought that everyone would be miserable with her gone, but instead Ame-no-uzume was dancing around and everyone was having fun!  Geez, the nerve of them!  So she said, "Geez, I thought you guys would be miserable!  What is your deal?"
Ame-no-uzume replied, "We're having a party because we found someone better than you!"
Amaterasu peeked out of the cave and saw herself reflected in the mirror.  She edged out of the cave to get a better look at her reflection (which she believed to be the other sun-deity) and one of the kami, who was hidden just outside of the cave, grabbed her and dragged her away from the door while the other kami put a rope over the cave door so she couldn't go back inside.
And thus light was restored to the world!
Susanoo was then fined for being a jerk and his beard was cut off and his fingernails and toenails were cut off****** and he was thrown out because nobody liked him any more.
In the Nihon Shoki, and in the children's version of the Kojiki that I've been reading, the story then continues that because it was pouring rain, Susanoo made himself a straw hat and straw coat and went around begging shelter from the various kami, who refused to let him in because he had been thrown out for being a jerk.
Anyway, the chapter ends there!  There's a lot more of Susanoo's story, but we'll get to that next time!

*When Confucianists were horrified by this story and said that Amaterasu and Susanoo were committing incest, the Shintoists pointed out that they were on opposite sides of the river and so obviously they weren't committing incest.  Obviously.

**What well?  Weren't they at a river???

***From page 78:

"That which appears to be faeces must be what my brother has vomited and strewn about while drunk."

How is this preferable???

****Skinning animals alive and skinning them backward are both super taboo, so Susanoo is being ULTRA TABOO.

*****If you think that seems crazy and dangerous, some forms of Taiwanese spirit possession involve self-mutilation.  For an interesting book on the subject, I recommend David Jordan's Gods, Ghosts, & Ancestors: Folk Religion in a Taiwanese Village, which is available for free (and legally!) online in its entirety.

******Some manuscripts say his fingernails and toenails were actually yanked out.  Yay.

Kojiki (part two)

Academic post #8

Kojiki (part two): This is basically why you should always keep peaches on hand

Previously on the Kojiki, Izanami died after giving birth to the fire kami.

Izanagi decided to follow his wife to the land of the dead, which was called Yomi.  Izanami came out to greet him, whereupon he said to her, and I quote, "O, my beloved spouse, the lands which you and I were making have not yet been completed; you must come back!"
...well, so much for love.
Unfortunately, Izanami had already eaten food from Yomi so she could not return to the land of the living.*  However, moved by her husband's bravery, she decided to go plead with the gods of Yomi,** but before she left she told her husband not to look at her.
You know how this is going to end.
Anyway, Izanagi waited and waited and waited and eventually he couldn't wait any more so he broke off the tooth of the comb in his hair bunch and lit it on fire and turned around to look at Izanami.  What did he see?  Well, the maggot-infested corpse*** of his beloved, of course.  Izanagi, being somewhat understandably super grossed out, turned and fled.
Unfortunately, fleeing from your spouse's grossness after she explicitly told you NOT to look at her is not the greatest idea, and Izanami was royally ticked.  She sent the hags of Yomi after her husband, beginning perhaps the greatest chase scene ever written.
(You might want to put on some exciting music at this point.)
Izanagi ran from the hags!  He undid his hair tie and threw it on the ground and it turned into grapes!  The hags stopped to eat the grapes!  He fled!  But the hags finished eating the grapes and started chasing him again!  So Izanagi grabbed a comb from his hair and threw it on the ground!  It turned into bamboo!  The hags stopped to eat the bamboo!  Izanagi got away!
But he wasn't safe yet!  Izanami sent the hordes of Yomi after him!  (She was really, really ticked.)  Izanagi unsheathed his sword and fled while waving it behind him!  It...did absolutely nothing, actually, as far as I can tell.
Suddenly, Izanagi arrived at the pass back to the world of the living!  He grabbed three peaches and lay in wait for his pursuers!  THEN
(dramatic pause)
HE ATTACKED THEM WITH THE PEACHES AND THEY ALL TURNED AND FLED!

...man, all that excitement wore me out.
Have I mentioned that I love reading this book?
To be fair, the peach thing isn't as totally random as it seems, because peaches were believed to ward off demons and evil spirits in China, so presumably the idea was imported and integrated into the story.
Still, it gives you a new appreciation for peaches--they can save you from the hordes of Yomi AND make a tasty snack!

So anyway, then Izanagi grabbed a giant boulder and rolled it in front of the entrance to Yomi.
Izanami was ticked and said, "If you don't move this boulder I will strangle a thousand people to death every day."
And Izanagi said, "Fine, then every day I will build one thousand FIVE HUNDRED birthing huts."
(This scene was used to explain the rapid population growth which occurred with the beginning of agricultural practices in Japan)
And then Izanami became the main kami of Yomi.

Izanagi decided that because he had visited Yomi, which was full of decay and death and roaring maggots, he had to purify himself.  So he went to the river and stripped off his clothes (thereby creating a whole slew of kami) and waded into the water to purify himself.  As he bathed, a whole bunch more kami were born, but the important ones were born when he washed his face.  When he washed his left eye, Amaterasu (the sun kami) was born; when he washed his right eye, Tsukiyomi (the moon kami) was born; and when he washed his nose, Susanoo (most commonly identified as the kami of storms or wind) was born.
Izanagi rejoiced to see these three children, because apparently the other eleven he had just given birth to weren't as interesting.  He proceeded to command Amaterasu to rule the high heavens, Tsukiyomi to rule the realms of night, and Susanoo to rule the ocean.
Amaterasu and Tsukiyomi, being fairly obedient children, went to rule their realms, but Susanoo wept and cried and howled.  Susanoo's tantrum was so bad that it caused all the rivers and seas to dry up and the plants to wither and natural disasters to occur all over the place.
Finally, Izanagi asked his son, "What is your deal?"****
Susanoo said that he missed his mom and wanted to go visit her in Yomi.
Izanagi was so disgusted that he said, "Fine, go visit her!  You're not allowed to live here any more!" and threw him out.

Before Susanoo left, he decided to say goodbye to his sister...but that is a story for next time.

*YES, the same as the Persephone myth.  NO, there is no connection between them.  The same sort of myth also exists among the Maori, Chinese, and Ryukyu Islanders, among others.

**Who are they?  Dunno.  And neither did whoever was writing the Kojiki apparently, because later Izanami is referred to as the head kami of Yomi.

***From page 62:

At this time, maggots were squirming and roaring [in the corpse of Izanami-no-mikoto].

I'm trying to figure out what a roaring maggot would sound like.  Ideas?

****Okay, so he actually said, "Why is it you do not rule the land entrusted to you, but [instead] weep and howl?"  But he was probably thinking, What is your deal?

Kojiki (part one)

Did you wake up this morning thinking to yourself, Man, I really want to read about the Kojiki?  Well, if so, today is your lucky day!  If not...DEAL WITH IT.

Academic Post #8 (aw, geez, I am so slow at this)

Kojiki (part one): Oh boy I guess this is what happens when you pay attention to anatomical differences

So in case you've forgotten, the Kojiki is one of the oldest extant Japanese documents.  It's a sort of creation-story-history-genealogy thing written in 712. It was intended to clarify the history of the imperial family (as well as the aristocratic families) and give an explanation for their ruling Japan.  It also recorded a bunch of native myths/songs/stories.  So an important document all around!  The stories continue to be fairly well-known in Japan today, a little bit like Greek myths in the US (although kids don't study them in school).

So, with that out of the way, let's dive into the story!

The Kojiki opens with a bunch of chapters* that nobody really cares about or bothers to remember.  Basically, at the beginning of the universe, suddenly three kami came into existence and then, while the land was floating around like a jellyfish, there were suddenly reeds and two more kami sprouted from the reeds.  They were called the '"separate heavenly deities."  Suddenly, a bunch more kami, called the "seven generations of kami" appeared!  Where did they come from?  Not important.  You'll never hear about most of them again.  Let's move on.
If you haven't already guessed, a great deal of the Kojiki just has things happening for no real discernible reason, and nobody really bothers to offer an explanation (or if there's an explanation, it just makes the reader more confused).

The only two kami who are actually important out of this bunch are Izanagi (male) and Izanami (female), the last of the seven generations of kami.  The separate heavenly kami said, "Hey, you guys, go solidify the land!" so they grabbed a special jeweled spear and dipped it into the brine and stirred a bunch.  When they lifted the spear out of the water, the brine that dripped from the spear formed an island.  They descended to the island, erected a pillar, and then the following EXCESSIVELY EROTIC scene occurred:

At this time [Izanagi-no-mikoto] asked his spouse IZANAMI-NO-MIKOTO, saying:
"How is your body formed?"
She replied, saying:
"My body, formed though it be formed, has one place which is formed insufficiently."
Then IZANAGI-NO-MIKOTO said:
"My body, formed though it be formed, has one place which is formed to excess.  Therefore, I would like to take that place in my body which is formed to excess and insert it into that place in your body which is formed insufficiently, and [thus] give birth to the land.  How would this be?"
IZANAMI-NO-MIKOTO replied, saying:
"That will be good."
Then IZANAGI-NO-MIKOTO said:
"Then let us, you and me, walk in a circle around this heavenly pillar and meet and have conjugal intercourse."**

Ancient Japanese erotica, ladies and gentlemen!***
One of the really interesting things about Shinto is that most religions have Strong Opinions about Sex (and they are usually sex-negative).  Sex is bad!  Sex is evil!  Sex is dirty!  Sex is okay but only if you're doing it with your spouse in order to have children!  Shinto on the other hand is kind of like, "I dunno, do whatever you want.  It's cool.  Sex makes babies sometimes I guess."

Anyway, after that incredibly erotic discussion, they walked around the pillar, Izanami greeted**** Izanagi and then Izanagi greeted Izanami and they did the deed.  But their baby was born a leech child and their second baby was apparently a failure of an island.  After setting the leech child adrift in a reed boat (whoo, infanticide!), they go ask for advice (from the heavenly separate kami) on how to actually make babies correctly.  As it turns out, the reason that their babies were fail babies was because Izanami spoke first, and when women speak before men, they have fail babies.

Interestingly enough, the male supremacy bit seems to be imported from China, as there are some records of the story without the entire leech child chunk.  There are a couple of other sexist chunks of the story that appear to be later additions influenced by Chinese schools of thought/Buddhism.

Anyway, Izanami and Izanagi did their whole walking around the pillar thing again, except Izanagi spoke first this time so they had moderately acceptable babies.  Anyway, they proceeded to have SO MANY BABIES, which is to say that they gave birth to all the islands of Japan and then a whole slew of kami.  Just as the reader is falling asleep from the excessive listing of all their children, Izanami gives birth to a fire kami who burns her genitals and she falls sick.  She vomits and kami are born from her vomit and she defecates and kami are born from her faeces***** and she urinates and kami are born from her urine and then she passes away.
Izanagi, understandably, was not so thrilled by this turn of events, and wept bitterly (giving birth to a kami from his tears).  He then buried his wife and cut off the fire kami's head with a sword.  The blood on the sword and the dead kami's body all turned into a bunch of other kami, which are then all listed.

And then Izanagi goes to the underworld to try to win his wife back, but that will be a story for next time.

If you want to read ahead, the best translation (that I know of) of the Kojiki into English is this one.

I leave you with this incredibly dumb comic Ellie made me draw.

(Click on it to make it bigger.)

*Each chapter being about a page long.

**From page 50 of Kojiki.

***I made Louki read this passage.  The look on her face was brilliant. I wish I had a camera.

****The actual dialogue from the scene goes something along the lines of:
"Whoa, this guy is hot!"
"Whoa, this girl is hot!"
Not even kidding.

*****The classiest word for poop!

Izumo adventures

Yay, here's the Izumo post FINALLY.  And this time I WILL NOT LET MY COMPUTER BE RIDICULOUS.

But first!

This is what the walkway by the side of Nanzan looks like right now.  SO MANY FLOWERS.

Anyway.  Izumo.

Two of our classmates came up on the night bus, so we met them at the station pretty early on Saturday morning.  We then took a train over to Izumo Taisha station, where

...there was a giant torii in the road.  'cause why not?

Anyway, we headed outside the torii to see the old Izumo Taisha station, which was built in 1912, I believe?  It stopped being used as a station sometime in the 1990s or early 2000s, but the city decided to preserve it as a sort of museum.

Most realistic dummies ever, right?

Don't you wish stations now had random tea rooms?

These are basically the classiest ticket gates.

Izumo has a thing about rabbits.  It's mostly because of a story about Ookuninushi-no-mikoto (the main deity of Izumo Taisha) and a rabbit.  I'll save that story for another time, though.

Tracks toward the mountains!

They had an old engine you could climb on, if you wanted to be a giant dork.

OLD ENGINES ARE EXCITING.

The tracks just sort of...stop.  It's kind of funny, actually.  There's a random sidewalk at the end of them.

It might be slightly hard to tell from these pictures, but there are these weird-looking turtles all over the roof of the station.  That's because turtles were considered to be messengers of the kami, and also because there's a mountain in the area named "Turtle Mountain."

So then we trekked back through the giant torii!

It's really ridiculously huge.

Here's another statue of Ookuninushi-no-mikoto and the rabbit.

The cool thing about Izumo is that there are pictures and statues of various different myths and legends EVERYWHERE.

Here's the shrine!

Everything was pretty dead-ish, since it was winter and all.

This is apparently a statue of one of the myths that I don't know.  Need to do some more reading.

Oh, hey, yet another statue of Ookuninushi-no-mikoto and the rabbit!

...okay, I'll tell you the story.

Ookuninushi-no-mikoto (who, by the way, has about a bazillion names) had eighty brothers,* and all his brothers decided to go to woo an extremely beautiful women.  They made Ookuninushi-no-mikoto carry their bags, because they were great brothers.

Anyway, as they were walking along, they came across a rabbit with no fur.  They told the rabbit that it should go bathe in salt water and then lie on top of a mountain and let the wind blow on it.

Needless to say, the rabbit found this experience incredibly painful, and by the time Ookuninushi-no-mikoto showed up, it was crying in pain.  It turned out that the reason the rabbit had no fur was because it had deceived a crocodile** into forming a bridge from another island to the mainland, by telling him that they should have a contest to see who had more relatives (and the rabbit would count the crocodile's relatives by hopping across the tops of their heads to the mainland).  The crocodile realized the deception right before the rabbit made it to land and skinned the rabbit.

Anyway, Ookuninushi-no-mikoto told the rabbit to wash in the river and then roll in a special kind of pollen. When the rabbit did this, its skin and fur was healed.  The rabbit thanked Ookuninushi-no-mikoto and told him that he would be the one to gain the incredibly beautiful woman all his brothers were going to woo.

When Ookuninushi-no-mikoto showed up with his brother's bags, the incredibly beautiful woman (who may or may not have been a princess) said, "Actually I am going to marry Ookuninushi-no-mikoto," which, needless to say, ticked off his brothers and they killed him twice, but that's another story entirely.

My classmates bought omikuji, and all of them got ranked as either the highest or the secondest high luck and apparently all of them are likely to get married this year?

Izumo Taisha is, if you remember from the Kaminazuki discussion before, where all the kami go for their big meeting in October.  Needless to say, that's A LOT of kami packed into a not very big space.

(Although, the main section of the shrine was under construction, so we didn't get to see it.  Story of my life.)

This moss was dripping freezing water and flecks of ice everywhere.

Sometimes I take pictures of weird things.

You can see the construction tent back there...

SO MANY EMA.

Also, Izumo Taisha is a LURVE SHRINE.  Well, to be entirely correct, it is THE lurve shrine.  If you want to get married, this is where you go.  Basically everything in the area has enmusubi written all over it.  I mean, I bought some tea, and it turned out to be ENMUSUBI TEA.  Some of the shops were selling ENMUSUBI ZENZAI, which had heart-shaped mochi in it.  (It also cost more than normal zenzai.)

...but even at love shrines you can find things like this.

Sake!

Here's that statue from before, just close up this time.

I really need to figure out what story this is.

So then we headed over to the History of Izumo Museum, which was more like the Really Old Stuff from Izumo Museum.  Also, they allowed pictures, hurrah!

This is apparently what Izumo Taisha used to look like.

SO MANY STAIRS.

At this point we went to see a movie which was a compilation of Ookuninushi-no-mikoto stories.  It kind of looked like part of it had been made by some B students in an animation class, part of it had been made by some C students in a green screening class, and part of it had been made by some pretty okay students in an acting class.  The actors (with the exception of one) were all real people, but the sets were either clearly CG (and not good CG; think computer games 10 years ago) or rotoscoped pictures.  And the rabbit was CG.  And I could only really tell it was a rabbit because the narrator said it was a rabbit.  But it was a kind of fun movie, in a really cheesy yet sincere way.

And then it was back to the museum!

Really old hammers!

This was a movie about life in ancient Izumo.  This dude is dumping this lady because she is not hot enough.  It is really sad.  The lady should go out and find dudes who are more appreciative of her singing skills.

Really old bells!

Really old (from the 1st century BCE to the 1st century CE) swords!  REALLY OLD.

Swords from the 6th century CE!

Well, you have now seen stone tools from Shimane 30,000 years ago.  I hope all you archaeology people are happy.

Anyway, after that we got lunch (Izumo soba, which is meibutsu and also DELICIOUS) and then hopped on a train where I fell asleep and my entire class moved to the other side of the train without bothering to tell me so when I woke up I freaked out and thought they had left without me.  But they hadn't.

So then we went to the Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum in Matsue, where Hearn lived for 14 months (and met his wife).  It was small but really cool!  I learned a lot about Lafcadio Hearn.

Then we went for a walk through Matsue...

OH MY GOSH SNOW EVERYBODY DOWN

Oh, hey, look, it's Matsue Castle!  I guess we can go up there...

SHRINE.

CASTLE WHOOOO

But it was closing as we arrived, so we couldn't go inside.

The sky was really gorgeous.  I think I'm just used to the sky in Nagoya, which is really grey and kind of depressing, so whenever I get out of Nagoya I get obsessed with how pretty the sky is.

And here's the shrine at the bottom of the hill again.

Definitely one of the cooler lion-dogs I have seen.

Snow and plants on the roof!  What more could you ask for?

So then we headed back toward the station...

SKY.

So then we headed back to Izumo, got dinner, and bid the guys taking the night bus back to Nagoya farewell before heading off to bed ourselves.

The next day!

We went HERE.

I would talk about the significance of this random rock in the middle of the beach, but I don't really know, except that it's sacred.  I think it's linked to one of the myths I haven't read, 'cause I kept seeing pictures of Ookuninushi-no-mikoto dragging a rock from the sea onto shore...

The weather was really weird.  First it snowed and then it snowed and rained at the same time and then it was raining on one side of the street and snowing on the other...

OCEAN!

So then we went wandering through the surrounding town and found a little museum of a bunch of pottery from the area.  It was really gorgeous!  I really liked the museum.

And then we headed back toward Izumo Shrine/the bus stop:

Hard to tell from this picture, but there's snow on the mountains.  WHOO, SNOW.

Anyway, after that we got zenzai and then took a bus back to the station where we caught a train to Okayama where we caught another train back to Nagoya.

And that was the end of the Izumo adventures.

*"Eighty" could just mean "a lot."  In older Japanese, big numbers that start with eight usually just mean "a lot."  Like the term 八百万の神々 (eighty thousand kami) is used to signify that there are a lot of kami in Japan, not that there are literally eighty thousand.

**Or a shark, depending on who you ask. Or sometimes a sea monster.