New Years Eve - Oji Fox parade

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Jarrett (who has made an appearance or three on these pages) told me about a unique festival happening near Oji station in northern Tokyo on New Year's Eve.  I hadn't made any plans for New Year's Eve at that stage, so I thought, why not?  It would be a very different kind of New Year's Eve celebration to what I was used to, but that's the great thing about living in Japan, almost everything that I get to do here is a new something, a new place, a new experience, a new way of looking at the world.

The Oji Fox parade was inspired by a Japanese legend.  As the story goes, foxes would gather from all over Japan under a big tree in Oji on New Year's Eve and disguise themselves in human costumes so that they could visit the Oji Inari Shrine. Inari is the Shinto God who was the God of foxes, fertility, rice, tea, sake, agriculture and industry, and in the past, swordsmiths and merchants.  This legend was immortalised by Ukiyo-e master Hiroshige Utagawa in this print.  

The parade has been held each year since 1993.  It is always held on New Year's Eve and doubles as the traditional first Shrine visit (Hatsumode) of the year, which is a ritual event in Japan. It begins at Oji Shrine at exactly midnight and parades through the streets to Oji Inari Shrine and it involves members of the local community, and representatives of both Shrines parading through the street wearing fox masks or fox face paint.  At about 10:30 pm I started making my way over to Oji filled with anticipation of what was to come.

Arriving at the station I eventually met up with occasional blog companion, Tetsuya, who had already been out and bought himself a fox mask!

A little while later, Jarrett and Angela arrived and we all set off in the direction of the starting point, Oji Shrine.  On our way, we saw plenty of signs that you usually see when a festival is happening........lamps!

We soon arrived at Oji Shrine only to find that it was jam packed with people!  We had arrived with about 15 minutes to go until the parade started and so had everyone else!

At midnight everyone let off a heap of party crackers and the parade was underway!  I wanted to stay behind to get some photos of Oji Shrine as the first people started lining up for their New Year's Shrine visit.

It was a tiny little shrine and unless you walked directly by it, you would have no idea that it was even there!

Wanting to find a spot along the parade route where I could get some good photos we headed off.  The crowds had already lined the streets near the beginning of the parade so we kept walking and finally about 3/4 of the way along the route we found a clear spot.  A little while later, the parade started making its way toward us.  First the official parade participants and next, members of the local community.  I'll let the pictures tell the story!

Musicians.

These looked heavy!

I think this next one was the parade queen.  She kindly stopped and posed for my photo!

This last little guy looked thoroughly bored with the whole thing!  Looked like he just wanted to go to sleep!

A couple of hours later (2am) it was all over.  Jarrett and Angela decided to head home but Tetsuya and I decided that the night was still young.  Hungry and wide awake we plotted our next move.  Where else to go early New Years Day with empty bellies?  A shrine of course!  Although a larger one was needed for the food stalls so we jumped back onto a train (most of the trains run all night in Tokyo on New Year's Eve) and made our way to my local shrine (Omiya Hachimangu Shrine, which is a decent size) and enjoyed all of the great food on offer.

These next ones were good!!  Some kind of gyoza filled pancakes!!

These next ones were not food.....

At around 8am, after having watched the first sunrise of the new year, I wandered home and jumped into bed for a good days sleep!

That was a very different New Year's Eve from what I am used to, but I loved it.  The fox parade was great, and you could really see and sense that the Oji community takes great pride in it.  Also, spending time at the Shrine and watching the first sunrise was a peaceful and serene way to see in the New Year.  In fact, I enjoyed it so much, I might do it all again next New Year's!!

That's it for this post.  I hope you enjoyed it.  Please leave a comment below and sign up on the tab on the right side of the page to get notifications when I put up a new post.

Take care, and see you next time!

Kamakura - Komachi-dori and Sugimoto-dera / Temple (part 2)

This is part 2 of a recent trip down south to Kamakura.  You can find part 1 here.

Finishing our sausages we made our way to the end of Komachi-dori made a left turn and walked over to the famous Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine.

We did not go in, however, as this is being saved for another trip down to Kamakura.  We kept on walking.

One of the beautiful things about Kamakura is that dotted around the town you can still see some lovely old houses.

I've heard some people referring to buildings like these as Japan's ghetto.  I totally disagree, I think they are lovely, rustic examples of Japan's architectural past.

We continued on towards our next destination, a temple that I had been wanting to visit for quite a while now.  Suddenly, looking around, we had entered a part of the town with a totally different feel to it.

We had warped straight into Little Europe with French bakeries, Italian restaurants and German smallgoods shops!  A very nice, and unexpected surprise!

Walking on we ran into a friend of mine, Faye, who I knew would be visiting Kamakura with her friends that day, but bumping into each other was a surprise.  She asked where I was heading to and when I told her she told me that they had already been past there and that it was closed!  I was pretty disappointed as I had been looking forward to visiting this Temple for a long time!  They did, however, give us another place to visit as a recommendation, so, changing our plans, we set off in the direction of our new destination, Sugimoto-dera.

Sugimoto-dera was the first Buddhist Temple established in Kamakura, way back in 734 AD.  Enshrined in the Temple are 3 statues of the Goddess of Mercy, Kannon.  The Temple has the nickname Geba Kannon (or Dismount Kannon) as people travelling through the area always dismounted from their horses as a sign of respect.  Another version also states that people who did not dismount were thrown from their horses!  In 1189 there was a fire in the Temple and the statues were in great danger until the Temple Monk jumped into the fire and rescued the statues.  He then lay them down under a nearby cedar tree.  It is from this incident that the Temple gets it's name which means "Under the Cedar Tree".

We arrived at the steps of the Temple and made our way to the ticket box to buy a ticket to get in (only 200 yen).

Next up were the 2 Nio, or Guardians of the Temple.

The bottom one has his mouth open in an "a" sound while the upper one has his mouth closed uttering the "um" sound.  A-um in Japanese symbolises the birth and death of all things.

Just beyond the Nio and the Temple gate lay the original steps leading up to the Temple.

Uneven and covered in moss, these steps are no longer used to approach the Temple, I could imagine someone slipping up and falling all the way to the bottom!

Looking to the right I saw a little alcove and wandered in for a closer look.

A lovely little secluded area in which I imagine the Temple Monks go to to have their Zen moments.

Reaching the top we arrived at the Temple proper, and it was a majestic structure.

Signs of autumn lingering could still be found with some beautiful colour to the trees.

Can you see my little furry friend in the third picture.......?

Making our way back down the steps, we headed back to the main area of Kamakura to a Chinese restaurant that Jarrett and Angela had been to previously and I sat down to a delicious plate of chinjao rosu (strips of pork, capsicum and bamboo shoots all cooked in a delicious soy sauce, pepper and ginger based sauce)

with this guy on the wall watching over us.

Finishing our food we made our way back to the station to come back to Tokyo.  It had been a nice little day trip and it had only made me eager to come back again and explore more of the beauty of Kamakura.

That's it for this post.  Please leave a comment below if you enjoyed reading the last 2 posts.  Please subscribe on the toolbar on the right side of the screen to receive updates when I put up another post.  Thanks, as always, for reading and see you next time!

Kamakura - Komachi-dori and Sugimoto-dera / Temple (part 1)

A couple of years ago I met a friend, Mauricio and his wife who wanted to show me around Kamakura, a nice area about 50 kms south of Tokyo.  They took me around the area and gave me a good insight into all of the places we visited.  Before I had a chance to write about it I had a nasty bicycle accident (lesson learned, always wear a helmet when riding a bicycle) and faced a recovery period that lasted a few weeks.  After recovering, I went back to my photos and got ready to write about the places we had visited, but all I could do was stare at the photos........I couldn't remember all of the places we had been to.  The blow to the head had obviously given me a bit of concussion.  I was really disappointed as it had been a great day.  Since then I had been waiting for a chance to go there again, and yesterday the opportunity arose.

Kamakura is a small city that is a popular spot for Tokyoites to visit on the weekend due to it's beach, lovely shopping street and it's closeness to Tokyo.  I had organised to meet friends Jarrett and his wife Angela (my travel mates on my recent visit to Utsunomiya and Nikko.  You can find those posts here, here and here).  Jumping on the Yokosuka line, I was there about 45 minutes later.  

Jarrett and Angela had arrived earlier so I messaged them to let them know I was there and coming out of the station I headed left, straight for the shopping street, Komachi-dori, which leads away from the station.

Komachi-dori stretches out for 360 metres and is lined with approximately 250 shops and restaurants of all varieties.  

Some kind of snack stall,

a seriously popular croquette shop that smelt great!

tea shop, I think,

some kind of sweet snack shop.

This next place is an insanely popular tsukemono, or pickles shop, Mikura.  It is so popular, in fact, that there are 2 in the area!

Don't know, but I love the vines growing on this building!

Kamakura is popular, not only with Japanese, but also foreign tourists which means that there is a lot of English in the area to help you out!

About halfway along the street I bumped into Jarrett and Angela and we decided that some food was in order.  Not far away was a little sausage shop that was barbecuing up some meaty goodness!

I highly recommend the pizza sausages.  As I was eating I heard one of nature's greatest sounds, the shrill screech of a hawk.

Two things immediately jumped into my mind.  The first was doing a "leap of faith" in the Assassin's Creed video game!  The second was a sign that I had seen at nearby Enoshima warning people of the danger of hawks swooping down and snatching food from the hands of unsuspecting victims. I found a sheltered area and settled in to enjoy my sausages!

I think I'll make this a two part post and finish part one here, otherwise this will stretch out way too long.

Thanks for reading.  Please leave a comment below or subscribe on the toolbar to the right of the screen.  Stay tuned for part 2 soon.  Bye!