Ise, toured

On Saturday, a friend from Nagoya came down to Ise to visit. Ise's a small town but a big tourist draw because of the Ise Grand Shrines, which are very important to the Shinto faith. Near the main shrine there's a traditional shopping district called Okage-yokocho. There you can buy gifts both cheap and not, eat a variety of foods and snacks, and mainly, you can enjoy a bustling atmosphere that Ise cannot offer anywhere else.

My friend, Mai, had been to the shrine once as a child but she didn't remember at all. So that meant I got to play host and show her around. The first stop was lunch. The Okage-yokocho area has a wealth of restaurants. We opted for one with reasonable prices and a short wait. Many shops in the area offer "Ise-udon" as a local specialty. This video explains, roughly, what makes Ise udon different from regular udon.

This picture shows my dish, curry-Ise-udon. The challenge is not getting curry-colored stains on your shirt.


And here's me posing for a photo in the restaurant.


And now that The Hair is on display here, let's take a closer look.


After lunch we went to walk through the shrine area. The idea is to go up to the shrine and pray, but the payoff at this shrine is the surroundings. Namely, trees. Big ones. And some other stuff. Take a look.


There's also a river flowing through the shrine grounds. As the Oregon Trail computer game might inform you, it's looking rather tranquil.


And here is the visitor herself.


And some more scenery.



After heading up to the alter at the shrine (photos forbidden) and praying, we headed back out to Okage-yokocho for a bit more looking around.

The first thing to catch our eyes was a cat who was zonked out. We think maybe the beer is to blame.


Then we decided to join the throngs of people all seeking to enjoy the soothing refreshment of Akafuku company shave ice with sweet bean paste inside. Right.

Akafuku is a local company founded in 1707 that is famous for its mochi (rice cake) snack. In the summer, they have a green-tea flavored shave ice with a sweet-bean-paste filling. It's ... pretty good. But you have to re-wire your conception of shave ice a little bit to enjoy the tea flavor. It's wildly popular. We had to wait about 10 minutes to get ours, and they were cycling through the customer number cards at top speed.


When showing a new person around Ise, the next stop after the shrine and Okage-yokocho is the Futami Wedded Rocks, known in Japanese as Meotoiwa. From the shrine, it's about 15 to 20 minutes away by bus. The rocks, said to be husband and wife, sit just off the shore in the Ise Bay. It really isn't much to see, and the rocks themselves aren't that impressive. I'm way more impressed by the variety of frog statues.

Here's a couple shots from there.


We then lucked out and caught a bus back to town with a minute to spare (they only head out once an hour). For dinner we went for okonomi-yaki. The Japanese like to call this "Japanese pizza" but it's really more comparable to a pancake into which you put in all kinds of delicious fillings. I had kimichee and pork while Mai had mochi-cheese. Hers was way better.

(photos to come ... technical difficulties)

And that's the story. It can be fun to be a tourist in your own town. Perhaps you can relate. Back in Pendleton I always though I should try that Underground Tours thing, but I never did. What home town touristy thing do you like? And which ones suck?