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Suwa City and Shrine Why was I not told about this place? This city is the most tourist-indifferent I have seen. We could find nothing in English but one typed page of explanations.
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"The Suwa area of Shinshu (Nagano prefecture) is a paradise of nature. Lake Suwa, with its rich body of water, lies in the middle of the basin surrounded by green hills with Alpine mountains visible in the distance. As long ago as the Old Stone Age, people inhabited this area. In the Jomon period (8,000 B.C.-300 B.C.), tehre were already a number of small settlements. Stoneware and earthenware, which are the traces of their lives in those days, are often found in various parts of the city today. | |||
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Splendid shrine architecture. No one is here. I guess it's the off season. I have seen no shrine that exceeds its architecture, materials and condition.
Suwa Taisha "The history of Suwa has been shaped hand in hand with the worship of the Grand Shrine of Suwa, the sacred rite and festivals taking deep root in the lives of the locals. Among the traditions handed down hundreds of years until today is the Onbashira Festival in which huge fir trees are cut down in the mountans and the trunks are erected in the four corners of the shrine precincts of the Suwa-Taisha. | ||
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_19apr11-b_0958.jpg The sumo ring.  |
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_19apr11-b_1011b.jpg View out the gate toward Suwa City.  |
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We arrived in Suwa in very cold, windy and rainy weather. This place becomes so cold in the winter that the lake freezes to a depth and the ice forms tall ridges about the surface.
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_19apr11-b_1743.jpg An entry for my collection of artisinal manhole covers.  |
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This kind of suicide is the local's idea of "sport". Maybe this explains why Suwa is shy about reaching out to foreign tourists.
"Onbashira, which is held only once every six years, awakens your primordial sensitivity to communicate with the gods in nature. In Kiotoshi log chute and kawagoshi river crossing, you see the world's wildest way to play with the gods. Suwa worship is truly mysterious. Suwa has been the home of the unruly gods. It was to this place where the god who held out longest against the Heavenly Deities escaped and settled. The old family of Ohori, the former priest and avatar of the god of the shring, worhips this god of the Isumo descendent. Ontosai, deer heads offering to the gods, indicates the tradition of the ancient hunting culture. Sixteen giant pillars rising to the sky at each four corners of the four main shrines appear to be a medium of communications with the spirits of the gods. | ||
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_19apr10-b_1702.jpg Another entry for my artisinal manhole covers.  |
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_19apr10-1849_nn.jpg This exhibit shows how logs are harvested and moved without using machines.  |
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