Ise Jingu

Yay!! I got to mark a place of my Japan bucket list for the first time in a long time! My first two years in JET, I was living the life. I didn’t have to pay any taxes in Japan or America, and the exchange rate was in my favor which made loan payments much easier. From my 3^rd year, income and residence taxes began to burden me, and the yen became so weak, that I had to send home almost double the money…aka 1/3 of my paycheck. D: For these reasons, my travel funds have become nonexistent. I’m living from paycheck to paycheck.

However, when my friend told me she was talking a day trip during Golden Week to Ise Jingu (Ise Shrine) in Mie, a place I’ve had on my bucket list since moving to Japan, I felt like I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go with her. I always thought I’d have to go alone. Since Ise is somewhat close and doesn’t require an overnight stay, I just barely fit into my budget.

We woke up early, and met a Tsuruhashi station. From there, we took the Kintetsu line all the way to Mie which took about 1 ½ hours by limited-express train. You can save money by taking a much slower train that takes more like 2 ½ hours. We had three main goals. First, eat all the Ise food, second, see Ise Jingu, the most sacred Shinto shrine in all of Japan, and third, see Meoto Iwa, a famous and scenic spot.

On our way~

I think we made it 5 steps out of the station when I saw a man grilling oysters on the street. Oysters are one of Ise’s specialties. I don’t remember exactly, but I think it was like ¥400 for three oysters, very cheap! The oysters were huge, plump, juicy, and delicious! I was impressed. After eating them together, we took 5 more steps and found a shop selling Ise’s famous rice cake, akafuku mochi. So of course, we went in, sat down, and shared some of the mochi. It was tasty! It was like reverse mochi because the red bean paste was on the outside instead of the inside of the mochi.

Grilled oysters.

We made an agreement to at least see the outer shrine of Ise Jingu before eating more. I’ll get in to more detail later, but Ise Jingu was unlike any other Shrine I’ve ever been to… which I guess was to be expected because it’s famous for its simplicity. Despite it being Golden Week, it surprisingly didn’t seem that crowded to me.

Part of the outer shrine.

Since my friend is awesome, she looked in to money saving details ahead of time. So thanks to her craftiness, we were able to get all-you-can-ride bus passes for ¥1,000. Since we had to ride the bus three times to get around, it saved us some money. After checking out the outer shrine, we took the bus to the inner shrine, but before going in, we popped in to a little café to get Ise’s famous udon noodles. They are special because they are particularly soft with a more flavorful broth. I really enjoyed them! There’s a main street lined with shops that draws a lot of tourists. We started to walk down it but decided to come back to it later after checking out the temple because the street seemed long and daunting.

At the entrance of the inner shrine, I had my first jumping picture taken haha! That was fun. Now about the temple itself… Unfortunately, I was kind of underwhelmed. Maybe confused is a better term. Ise Jingu didn’t really look like what I thought it would. I had seen pictures, but it seemed a lot different. Perhaps this is partly due to it being newly rebuilt. They rebuild it ever twenty years to keep it fresh, and it had just been redone 3 years ago. The wood was pale yellow, not mossy and brown like I had expected. The thing that was most confusing to me was the layout. The inner shrine and outer shrine basically looked the same to me. Maybe to a more trained eye it’s different, but even though I tried to research some of the history and whatnot before going, I just couldn’t grasp what parts were most important.

My first jumping picture.

I’ll try to explain the best I can, but basically, you walk in to the temple grounds under a gate and over the Uji Bridge (which confused me because there is another really important bridge in Uji called the Uji Bridge). Once you get in and walk a bit, you come to a small building that looks like the other small buildings from the outer shrine. Then you walk more and come to another of what looks to be the same thing, but it’s not. Then you walk more, and come upon what is apparently the most sacred and main building, but it looked exactly like the others. Then you end up back at the entrance you came in. When I got back to the entrance, I was confused, and thought to myself, “Wait, did we miss it? Where was the main building?” We figured out that we had already seen it but didn’t realize it as we were seeing it. This is the image I had in mind, but I never saw this angle.

This apparently was the staircase up to the main building.

Like I said, I felt a little underwhelmed, but I will say that the style and architecture of the buildings was unlike any other shrine I’ve seen, and I thought it was really neat, although simplistic. The roofs looked all fluffy, and there were no nails or screws. Everything is made of interlocking wood kind of like Lincoln Logs (for those of you who know what those are).

Fluffy roofs!!

I’ll tell you a couple more things I liked about the shrine. There was this really clear, sparkling river which apparently is considered to be holy, purifying water. Many people touched the water. My friend and I sat by the river and enjoyed the atmosphere. Also, the trees here were incredible. I’ve never seen such huge, thick trees in my life! They were unbelievably wide. The big trees I think are good luck because many people touched them, and the wood was all shiny from being touched so much. I made sure to hug a few trees lol.

Sacred river.

Fat tree. <3

After exploring the inner shrine, we headed back to the street lined with shops. The buildings were all built in the same traditional style, and it was really pretty! Even Family Mart looked like old Japan! We went in and out of little shops in search of more mochi but didn’t find much. Instead, we found THE BEST fried oysters I’ve ever had in my life!! We took a break to sit down, have a couple oysters and some alcohol. During that time, a little boy came up to us and practiced his English greetings on us. He was so cute!

Main shopping street.

Awesome Family Mart!

All the Ise foods: udon, grilled oysters, fried oysters, and
akafuku-mochi.

Once we had our fill of exploring the street (which was pretty crowded), we took the bus to Meoto Iwa. Oh, before that, I was sure to buy some souvenirs for my boyfriend and his family. It’s custom.

We went on Children's Day.

We saw a real tanuki!

...and stray cats. :)

Meoto Iwa, or “the wedded rocks” or “married couple rocks” as they’re called, are two rocks in the ocean that are connected by a one ton rope. These rocks are considered sacred and celebrate marriage. Couples come here to pray for a good marriage or relationship. The big rock represents the male and the smaller one, female. At this shrine, there are also a lot of frog statues. Frog in Japanese is “kaeru” which also means “to go home.” The frogs represent safe travel home. This place was very pretty and my favorite part of Ise. The water was really rough, and waves would crash up on to the walking path and smash against the rocks. It was really exciting. The rocks were beautiful. Be sure to go during high tide.

Meoto Iwa.

Frogs.

My only complaint is that the area this shrine is in is a bit out of the way in a dilapidated area. There was a really small and depressing aquarium that we didn’t go in, but there was an outside exhibit in front with two large seals in it. The exhibit was filthy and tiny for these massive seals. They looked depressed. One was just lying there motionless, and the other was trying to climb out over the wall, screaming. It really hurt to watch and unfortunately left a scar on my image of Ise.

Overall, I’m glad I went to Ise, though. I hadn’t taken any sort of trip in a long long time, and it felt great. I also really enjoyed my friend’s company. There are some places I want to travel to alone, but Ise wasn’t one of them. It was nice to go with my friend. I hope this gives you an idea of what to expect at Ise! I suggest researching before you go to get the best experience.