The Ochis – Katsuhiko and Chiomi, and their sons Kazuma, Toshiki, and Ryota, every year make the drive north from Imabari to Innoshima on the Shimenami Kaido at mid-night, New Year’s Eve. Innoshima is the third, and largest of the series of seven islands running north across the Seto Sea from Imabari, Shikoku, to the main island of Honshu.
They do this to pay their respects to and lay the departing year to rest, and pray to the kami at Oyamazumi-jinja for good luck in the coming one. Oyamazumi-jinja is one of the most important shrines in Japan, a Samurai shrine and national treasure. A museum there houses an extremely important collection of Samurai armor, katana and other memorabilia.
They invited me along and of course I said yes!
It gets cold quickly in Imabari when the sun goes down in the winter, and there was a cutting wind blowing. It is often windy in the winter here. Katsuhiko picked me up at 11:45 outside my house, and we drove north on the Shimenami Kaido, a rare opportunity for me to see the bridge from a car! Usually I experience the bridge on a bike. It is four to six lanes wide, with separated, eight foot wide pedestrian/bicycle/scooter corridors on each side. The scooters use the east side corridors, and these are generally off limits to cyclists and pedestrians, so I cycle the west corridor. The bridge is very high in the first span and the views of the Seto Sea are impressive…but in the car, in the dark, it’s the scattered lights of the small villages on the islands that define the view for me…
The drive was quiet, the boys playing gameboys or sleeping, Chiomi watching tv on her keitei (!), Katsuhiko and I occasionally talking. I like driving at night like this, it is almost dreamlike, and the conversation seems to move freely from reminiscence to passing landmarks, to the weeks news.
We arrived and parked across the street from the Jinja entrance. Bundled up in my toque and cycling gloves and windproof goretex jacket, I still felt cold! I unfortunately had caught a cold a few days before.
We walked through the big entrance torii and past the guard dogs and the group of ten or twelve refreshment stalls selling hot tea, hotcakes, and skewered squid satay. The jinja is very big, and quite pretty. In the middle of the front square we stopped in front of a massive old tree, surrounded by a fence of stone donation markers. This is a Kusinoki (Camphor) tree said to be 2,600 years old! It is massive, though the top had been blown off sometime in the last 60 years or so, and it is only about 20 meters tall at the moment. This happens to old trees, and led me to wonder how many times it had happened to this one. It’s the oldest tree I’ve ever seen, I think. Later someone told me that among the giant Cedars of southern Kyushu there is one supposed to be 7,000 years old…astounding if true! Camphor trees are considered sacred and often grown at jinja.
I bought a 100 yen New Year’s prophesy at a stall in the inner courtyard, where the priests would be selling them and other amulets 24 hours a day for the next four days…and received highest good luck! Chiomi did too, so after the boys had written their new years goals on wooden amulets, we hurried off to hang them up at their designated spots for the Kami to take care of during the year. One ties ones paper fortune to a rope, or tree branch, being careful not to break it…or all is lost.
In the main shrine, it is possible to purchase more involved, lengthy purifications and ritual, though we did not investigate this.
Mission achieved, we walked around a little, where I saw another Camphor tree, perhaps a mere 800 years or so old…and I resolved to come back during the new year to visit the museum of armor, swords etc. Oyamazumi-jinja is the samurai shrine, the historic center of the samurai ethic, and the museum houses one of, if not the most, important collection of samurai armor and katana in Japan.
There were perhaps 1,000 people wandering around, by no means a large crowd, but I was told that by nine in the morning, cars would be backed up for a number of kilometers and one would not be able to walk freely because of the press of people within the grounds of the jinja. I was glad to see it at this, to me more special, time.
They treated me to a Japanese pancake, a hotcake cooked with anko, or red bean paste, in the middle. Hot and delicious! Around 2:15, we left, and drove back south. It was not the end of the trip, however, as we drove up Kiro-san on Oshima to the tenbodai, or viewing spot, to look at the lights of Imabari and Shikoku. The parking lot was dark and deserted. Kiro-san is a mountain on the southernmost island, Oshima, and the view is fabulous. The wind was fabulously cold, however, and after about two minutes admiring Imabari, (Oh, look, Ishizuchi Ski Field!) we hurried back down, and fired up the van’s heater. There is a small snack bar at the parking lot, and I'm told it is well known for its ice cream! I’ll try it in the summer…
I arrived back at my house at 3am, now prepared for the New Year. Thank you to the Ochi’s for a wonderful trip!
