Fauns and one-eyed goblins

We have all left Shunkoin and Kyoto, either to return to Los Angeles or spend some time elsewhere in Japan. Another student, Cari, and I are now on Miyajima, an island off the coast of Hiroshima. It's only accessible by ferry, and in the morning people who live on the island take the ferry to work or high school. The island is larger than I expected, but most of it is mountainous and covered in virgin forest. I asked the lady who owns our hotel where the coin laundry was, and she said there wasn't one! Now that is a small town. (She kindly offered to throw some of my laundry in with hers.)

This is a five minute walk from our lovely traditional Japanese hotel: http://www.japan-guide.com/g2/3401_01.jpg

It's the torii (sacred gate) of Itsukushima Shrine. When we came in last evening, the tide was low, and we could walk across a wet beach strewn with shells and seaweed up to the torii. It stands supported by nothing but its own weight; the pillars rest on the beach but aren't embedded in it. The bases of the pillars are covered in barnacles and coins people have stuck in amongst the barnacles as offerings, and the sand around the torii is also covered in coins. (One yen and five yen - odd numbers are better. I forget why. Maybe because multiples of four are unlucky? (The word for 'four' sounds like the word for 'death.')

Completely tame "wild" deer hang around the pier, being petted by tourists, despite the signs warning that they eat paper and might gobble up a map or a thousand-yen note right out of your hand. I didn't see any deer eating paper, but I did see one staring wistfully at the doors of a restaurant. I grabbed for my camera to nab that hilarious shot. As I pressed the button, a hundred tourists' cameras clicked beside me.

Last night we had an amazing gourmet meal - part traditional Japanese, part Western fusion - served at the inn. I will probably do a photo-essay on it later for your delectation, and also one on the fabulous Japanese breakfast I had at the inn this morning. I had miso soup, rice, kabocha squash, smoked fish, pickles, greens, green tea, and udon with flat noodles rather than the usual thick spaghetti-like ones. Cari had a western breakfast of ham, toast, black tea, and scrambled eggs. We were both happy.

The wind was freezing coming off the beach this morning, so I retreated to the inside observation lounge in the inn, which has hot tea, comfy chairs, a view of the sea and a pagoda spire, and a library! Mostly in Japanese, but I note the temping "Miyajima Story" by Shizuteru Usui and "The Faun's Folly" by Sandra Heath. Randomly opening each, I find these lines:

"On the night that the Heike family met its end, I could see various evil spirits of the Heian era, such as a human being with a black cow's head and a one-eyed goblin, silently walking down the corridor, but were they the bitter feelings incorporated in the votive tablets?"

"It had been the very circumstance that might tempt a foolish faun into using forbidden powers."

I am typing this in the observation deck right now, on Cari's laptop. But peeking out the windows, it looks a bit less windy, so I shall venture out now.

Miyajima Story, by Shizuteru Usui (live-blog)

God knows if I'll ever see this weird little book again, but I have to record some choice quotes as I read it here in Ryoso Kawasaki, with a lovely view of the ocean and a pagoda tower before me, along with a can of hot coffee. It's a truly odd mixture of fantasy, history, folklore, and Miyajima tourism promotion.

The author's introduction explains that he visited Miyajima after a hurricane, and began pondering its tragic history: across the ocean from Hiroshima, and the site of the war between the Heike and Genji clans.

The story begins as an unnamed miko (shrine maiden) secretly gives birth on Miyajima, where women are not supposed to give birth as it's impure. (She got pregnant by secretly having sex with a man in the stable of the mechanical white horse, which was clean since neither horses nor monkeys are allowed on Miyajima. By the way, I have a photo of a white horse statue here, which is probably what was referred to. It's creepy.) Omens were bad: the fortunetelling thing where omens were predicted by seeing how crows eat dumplings didn't go well. That is called otoguishiki, and since googling it turned up a photo of a crow flying off with a dumpling, I assume it's real.

She is spotted by tengu, who tells her if she has sex with him, he won't tell anyone about her baby and will give her the ability to see the past. She does so (no details, alas) but it of course turns out to be a curse. No mention of what happened to her baby. The author plunges into a history of the Heike clan which assumes all readers are as up on it as he is. I am not. But it's entertaining anyway, complete with a really gross two-page description of exactly how to cut someone in half diagonally.

Things are bad in Kyoto: There are even stories of people being so hungro that they ate other people. Ever since then, it has come to be said that human beings taste like pomegranates.

Tomoe Gozen just turned up. Usui commends her beauty, horsemanship, and martial prowess.

After describing how an arrow pierced a fan across the sea (I'm sure this is a famous event from the Heike tales), Usui pauses some tourist assistance: As for Miyajima souvenirs or gifts, there is nothing better than the momiji manju. It was conceived by the proprietress of an inn in Momijidani after the Meiji era started.


A gay quarter existed, and men very much fancied and fully enjoyed it. The legend that there is a very jealous Goddess named Ichikishima-Hime in Miyajima and that when a married couple visits the island, the two will be torn apart, came from the thinking of protecting the male paradise.