The town of Ise, in Mie Prefecture to the east of Osaka, is home to what may be the most revered Shinto shrine in Japan. Ise Jingu.

Ise Jingu’s prominence is wrapped up in the fact that the main sanctuary, called Kotaijingu, is where Amaterasu Omikami, the ancestral kami of Japan’s imperial family, is enshrined.

Meg and I (and our pal Javier from Spain) recently spent a day in Ise — first, roaming the grounds of Ise’s inner shrine, Naiku, including an adjacent grove of epic-sized trees, and then at Naiku’s sister site, six kilometers away, the outer shrine of Geku.

Naiku especially is mind-boggling in size and scope. Surrounded by forest and river, and containing the mysterious and monumental main sanctuary (mysterious because only the Emperor and his family, and just a handful of priests, are allowed inside, no photos allowed, limited viewing perch), Naiku is well-loved by visitors who flock there by the millions (eight million visitor/pilgrims in the past year).

The trees at Naiku, many old and misshapen, are especially beautiful, which might be one of the reasons it became a Shinto temple in the first place. Shintoism has long revered trees, especially the older, larger and more deformed or interestingly shaped ones, as it’s in those trees the Shinto spirits, or Kami, are more likely to be found. Interesting, eh?

We followed our day in Ise with a couple more to the south, sleuthing out more of the Kumano Kodo to hike.

Settling on portions of the near the town of Odai, we hiked parts of the Nisaka-toge and Tsuzurato-toge (Nisaka Pass and Tzuzurato Pass). The hiking was a mixed bag in that there are so many portions of the Kodo that have been paved over and subsumed by the modern world. You definitely need to do your research to find the Kodo trailheads and then to locate long stretches of trail uninterrupted by roads, train tracks, roads or tunnels.

(The best of the online maps of the Kodo nearest to Odai can be found here: http://www.kodo.pref.mie.lg.jp/…/ass…/download/guide_map.pdf)
All in all, a good mix of the modern (good food, a charming, locals’ sento in Ise), the spiritual (Ise’s inner and outer shrines, Naiku and Geku), and the natural (hiking parts of the Kumano Kodo).

The latest video is right here.

Naoshima Island has been in our sights for years. A tiny spot on the map, just a few kilometers off the coast, it has an outsized reputation among fans of modern art. When we realized we’d be driving by the port town of Uno, gateway to Naoshima, we thought, what the heck, let’s see this place for ourselves!

Getting there is easy enough — two ferry companies make the trip from Uno almost hourly. The big decision we had to make was whether to take the van or go on foot. After speaking with a couple who’d just returned from the island, we decided that in the interest of “keeping it frugal,” we’d take the van so we could save on the cost of a room as well as cook our meals (we’d just done some grocery shopping so we had tons of food to cook up).

The rainy weather wasn’t going to make it any easier to get around on foot or bike, either, so we made the decision to go with the van.

With the next ferry leaving in just a few minutes, we bought tickets and got ourselves ready to go. Not thirty minutes later we were on Naoshima, driving on the island’s main road, asking directions for the information center and doing our usual scanning of the roadway for likely spots to sleep.

The island itself and drop dead beautiful. As we explored, we sometimes hugged the coast and beaches. Other times the road took us up and over the green hills that make up the interior.

There is art and museums everywhere. As night fell, we were able to visit one of the island’s main museums, the Benesse House Museum. We were unprepared for the art — by Sam Francis, Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney and Claude Monet, to name a few big names hanging on the walls.

Artists represented outside include Yayoi Kusama, whose “pumpkin” sculptures are probably the best known Naoshima art pieces, and also Karl Appel’s many playful cats.

The island’s main town, Honmura, is the setting for what the Benesse Foundation (which owns most of the island and all the art) calls the Art House Project, eight traditional houses turned art projects we can walk through and experience on the various artists’ terms.

Naoshima is definitely worth the trip, but there is a lingering feeling that the whole experience is just too contrived. Maybe Meg and I are living too hand to mouth as we “vanlife” around Japan — the last thing I expected to see between our instant ramen breakfasts and our two banana/two apple lunches was a museum wall heavy with Claude Monet’s Water Lilies.

Naoshima take-away? Visit if you are in the neighborhood but don’t build a trip around it.

Cheers for now!

We drove down the coast of Awaji Island to check out the whirlpools at Naruto Kaikyo, under the Onaruto Bridge. It happened to be the opening date for the Uzushio (whirlpool) cruise season — March 1st. We were welcomed by an Awa dance team.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t figure out the trailhead for Mt. Tsurugi in Tokushima. One of main roads to the trailhead was closed due to snow and construction. The townies near Mt. Tsurugi were no help.

The next day the rain came down hard so we gave up and headed home. We stumbled upon a roadside cafe surrounded by straw dolls a custom that started the town of Nagoro in Tokushima. One of women in town started to put handmade, real-sized human dolls where people (including kids) used to hang out… to replace the empty space after most of the locals left for the big city. We didn’t make it to Nagoro, but got some idea of what it must be like after hanging out in the cafe, full of humanized straw dolls…spooky!