July 19, 2016 (Narita, Japan)
This is the first blog post. I know there will be a learning curve but I hope to scale the hill relatively painlessly and quickly. I’ve got my fingers crossed at least.
Grant and I arrived in Japan on July 19th. The air was thick with humidity but not as hot as the Hawaii we had just left. Despite being warned that the heat would be really bad, we found it to be tolerable and not that humid.
We stayed at the Narita Radisson hotel with some friends that were traveling with us. Before checking in, we visited the Narita-san Shinshō-ji temple which is a Buddhist temple located in Narita. The temple was completed in 940 and was dedicated to Fudou myou (Unmovable Wisdom King) who is usually portrayed grasping a sword and rope and surrounded by flames. He is also known as a fire god. We picked this temple as it’s beautiful, relatively close, and would provide our friends, who are visiting Japan for the first time, a taste of Japan right off the airplane.
When we got there, it was misty and kind of rainy. We looked around, while crowding under each other’s umbrellas and got some awesome photos, even though the sky was completely white and blocked out some good natural lighting.
We tried Omikuji, a type of Japanese fortune-telling usually done at temples or shrines in which you shake a long hexagon-sided box, a stick pops out with a number painted on the end, you turn to a stack of drawers and select the one with your number on it, then open it to receive a piece of paper with your fortune on it. Yay! I was nervous at first as I was about to embark on a trip through Europe, and didn’t really need any naysayers, including bits of holy paper, but was relieved to find out mine was…. Excellent luck!
Apparently, if you don’t want bad luck to affect you, there is a rack where you can tie the piece of paper to, and the temple will take care of that fate for you.
As we were leaving, we tried a game where you attempt to land a coin on a stone turtle in the middle of a pond near the entrance. You have three tries, if you make it, your good luck is ensured (or in my case, reinforced).
I got it in 2 tries.
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