Alone between shrines

I wake up at 4 AM. Japan is outside of my door, but I am supposed to sleep my jet-lag away. Unfair. At 7, I can’t take it anymore. The next hour brings some nice Japanese TV, and one clear problem. Kyushu is preparing for a typhoon, which will hit tonight and stay until noon tomorrow. Great. Yesterday, I thought Japan was crying tears of joy that I am back. Now I am starting to think it is trying to flush me out by all means possible. But I am not going to let “ a little rain“ get me down.

I start at Hakata station and try to make my way towards Dazaifu. Try being the  imperative word. At first I buy the wrong type of ticket. Then I take the wrong train. Then I almost miss the right one. Well, it seems whenever I don’t ask for directions, I definitely go the wrong way. The universe wants me to just practice my Japanese whenever I can.

Finally I arrive at Futsukaishi, and I try to follow the directions on my English map to the different sites. That‘s my first mistake. I should have never picked up the English map. It has no road names, the road markings don’t make sense, and the Japanese place names have been… we will call it „translated“ to avoid offence. At some point I have to give up. Asking random people on the street works better anyway. I arrive at the first shrine, Enoki Jinja. I only meet one older Gentleman on his morning walk. The shrine is a bit off path. However, when I finally make it to the first big site -the remains of the Dazaifu Government Office- I remain alone. There‘s  a gardener, and that is it. No tourists. I mean, it is raining, but they warned me Dazaifu would be busy regardless of weather or day. Slowly I walk through the old ruins, temples and shrines. I think in the first 3 hours of my trip, I met about 10 people, none of them normal „tourists“. This means I get some great pictures without  visual distractions. It also starts to creep me out. Where is everybody? Have I wandered into silent hill?

Kaidan-in and Kanzeon-ji are behind me, as I climb up to a little shrine where Tokugawa Ieyasu is said to have rallied his followers. Again, nobody there but a horde of mosquitoes, ready to eat me alive. And they do. After this, I get lost again. This time I am saved by an older couple, who direct me back to the next big shrine on my list: Dazaifu Tenmangu Jingu. And finally, after a morning of loneliness, I find them. The tourists. I find them all crammed into the main street towards Tenmangu Jingu. By the time I make it to the main stone gates, I want my creepy loneliness back. But the shrine is beautiful, with it’s big open areas, the elegant Stone animals and fat koi fish. I love koi. They are fat and happy and everybody loves them. I buy a few good luck charms. The shrine economy must be great, especially because each charm expires in exactly 1 year. It seems faith does have a date of expiry after all ;) . I also witnessed the performance of the world’s smallest Drummers. I managed a short video for everybody to enjoy.

I also went to the shrine museum, and they had some nice swords in there. After my way back to Fukuoka, I mostly looked around the Tenjin stores. Some things have stayed the same, but most smaller stores have changed. Also, there are only 3 gothic lolita stores left now. How times change.

Now I am sitting in my hotel room waiting for the storm. See you on the other side, guys. Tomorrow I have to carry my suitcase through a typhoon. Let’s see how that goes!

Pictures 09/19 Dazaifu