Seishun 18: Ise Shrines, Married Rocks
We got up bright and early for the last leg of our Seishun adventure. We headed to the Ise shrines and the married rocks!
The Ise shrines are the most sacred Shinto shrines and I learned about them in school so I really wanted to go xD
There are the inner shrines and the outer shrines but they are a bus ride apart.
One of the many chickens roaming the shrine grounds!
Camera-shy horse!
100m long bridge at the entrance of the Inner Shrines
Main shrine of the inner shrines: this shrine is torn down every 20 years and then rebuilt on the plot of land next to it. Because this shrine is so sacred, no pictures allowed past this point!
After the Ise Shrines, we had planned to see the Meoto Iwa (married rocks) but we ended up arriving at Ise later than planned so we had to make a really quick decision to decide if we would go to the Meoto Iwa or not! Thanks to cellphone internet and Hyperdia, we decided to go (even though that meant that we were going to be cutting it close to missing our train back to Nara, and consequently missing our night bus back to Tokyo)!
Meoto Iwa - sacred rocks that represent a husband and wife
Then it was back to Nara to catch our night bus back to Tokyo! The bus ride itself wasn’t very pleasant but it was a nice change from the long train rides! This Seishun trip was quite fun. The train rides were oh so long but we got to travel and see a lot of things for cheap! I crossed off a lot of places from my ‘places to go in Japan’ list! But sadly, the end of this trip also marked the end of my traveling in Japan this year. Hopefully I will be back in Japan later with a JR pass (I want to take the shinkansen!!) and more money for traveling!
