Jumping fish and other shrine stories.

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Originally uploaded by p1ckle.

On monday we went to Usa shrine, one of the biggest shrines in Japan. As you can see from the photo, the scale is pretty vast - this is only one of the entrances to the shrine. The shrine itself was really quiet; normally it's really busy, but it was a really peaceful, quiet place for somewhere that popular. As seems to be the tradition, whilst most of the trip was just your normal visit to a national monument kind of thing, we did see a woman walking her cat - not even with a proper lead, just some bits of rope. The poor cat was trying to escape, and didn't look happy at all, but to no avail...

The shrine buidings themselves are beautiful; the sort of thing that'd make it onto one of the quarters of a 'Greetings from Japan' postcard, if such tacky things existed here (and if they do, I want one). There was a small lake behind the main shrine buildings full of Koi Carp, who were jumping for flies or something. Very cool.