300 Writing Prompts: A Great Escape

When I lived in Japan, I tried to do travelling on daikyu days (compensatory holidays) or on weekends and national holidays. Even so, the first year in Japan, I never went anywhere because I was afraid to and hadn't quite worked out a travel buddy yet. Later my travel time consisted of travelling with a friend to do the Shikoku Henro 88 Temple Pilgrimage. But when my friends returned to the States and I hadn't really made new ones, I began travelling solo in Japan. My first solo trip was to Yakushima, an island that's a part of Kagoshima prefecture. However, I've talked about that one quite a bit, so I'm going to talk about a major solo trip that required me to take actual vacation days off of work!

October is a special month in Japan because it's the "no god month," where all 8 million kami are said to assemble at the great shrine Izumo Taisha in Shimane Prefecture. I wanted to go to Izumo Taisha to be there when the kami were there, in case the shrine did anything special or if I could get "vibes" while I was there (some shrines in Japan definitely have vibes).

I planned my trip. I would stay overnight in Tsuwano, Shimane, to check out one of the top Inari Shrines in all of Japan: Taikodani Inari. Then after visiting the shrine in the morning, I'd hop back on the road and head to Izumo.

Besides the 8 million gods meeting at the shrine, Izumo is filled with all sorts of myths. The god Susanoo has a lot of stories there, so I visited shrines related to him and his wife Kushinadahime. I also visited the door to Yomi, the Shinto underworld. If there was a story about it, I wanted to go and live it.

After Izumo in Shimane prefecture, I'd take a day trip to the neighboring prefecture of Tottori to see the giant sand dunes that look like a desert. Then I did the most geeky thing ever and went to Iwami to do the Free! scavenger hunt (the anime Free! takes place there).

While I had stayed at hotels on the way to Izumo, I cancelled my hotels for the trip back and just did a straight shot back to Kikuchi. It was a six hour drive. I was tired, but I loved this solo trip and the chance to experience the location of some of Japan's most important and ancient stories.