Tales of Nippon: Diciembre 31, December 31st (II)

Despues de Kobe tomamos rumbo a Mijayima, que es donde decidimos recibir al nuevo ano. Ahi tomamos un ferry para llegar a una parte de la ciudad que esta en una pequena isla. En dicha isla hay unos cuantos templos, tanto sintoistas como budistas, hay ciervos sagrados rondando en libertas y por supesto una extencion de la ciudad, aunque no muy grande. Los ciervos se dejan acariciar, aunque siempre buscan que les des de comer, comen de todo. La gente japonesa tiene el mal habito de darles de comer papel, y no solo comen eso, tambien comen carne y mariscos, si les das de comer te siguen pidiendo mas.

Una vez nos libramos de los ciervos carronyeros, vimos un tanuki blanco, es una especie endemica de Japon, pariente de los mapaches (aunqeu parece un cruce entre un mapache y un zorro) y suele ser de color marron.
Despues hicimos camino a la zona de los templos. En el trayecto habia muchos puestos de comidas distintos, me dedique a probar casi de todo. A la entrada del templo mas importante de la isla, uno sintoista, habia una fila enorme, pues en Japon es costumbre recibir el ano nuevo pasando por el templo a pedir deseo a los espiritus y sacar su suerte para el anyo. Nosotros decidimos no hacer fila durante mas de una hora para eso. Dimos la vuelta por detras de ese templo hacia la salida del mismo donde habia mas cosas, y para nuestra alegria, un camino para bajar una playa.
Esta no es una playa cualquiera, es la playa sobre la que esta contruida el templo sintoista, y mas adentro su torii. La cuestion es que esta playa generalmente no existe, esta bajo el agua, exepto cuando baja la marea y es posible llegar hasta el torii.

Aprovechando que esa noche habia marea baja decidimos hacercarnos hasta el torii, ya que ahi no habia casi nadie. Ahi fue donde recibimos al 2007, sin mas cuenta atras que la de unos jovenes japoneses que tambien estaban ahi bajo la luz de una luna casi llena.

Right afeter Kobe we made way to Miyajima, which is where we decided to recieve the new year. There we boarded a ferry that took us to a part of the city that is on a little island. On such island one can find a few temples, both Sintoist and Budist, there are sacred deer roaming around freely and of course a not to big part of the city.

The deer are used to humans so one can pet them, but they are always looking to being fed, they will eat anything. The Japanese have the bad habbit of feeding them paper, and they will not only eat that, they will also eat meat and sea-food, if you feed them they'll hunt you down for more.

Once we got free from the scavanger deer, we saw a white tanuki, a species that can only be found in Japan, and that is a cousin of the rakoons (it looks more like a cross between a rakoon and a fox) and it's usually brown.

After that we made our way to the temple area. On the way there where all kinds of food stands and I did my best to try as much as I could of what they had to offer. At the entrance of the most important temple of the island, a Sintoist one, there was a huge line, in Japan it's a costum to recieve the new year going to a temple to ask wishes to the spirits and get their year luck prediction. We decided not to stand in such line for more than an hour just for that. We went around the temple to the exit area where there where more things, and to our luck a way down to the beach.

That is not your average beach, it's a beach on which the Sintoist temple is built, and deeper in it it's torii. Geenraly that beach doesn't exist, it's underwater, except when there's a low tide and one can get as far as the torii.

Since there was a really low tide that night we decided to make it all the way to the torii, since there was practically no one there. That is where we recieved 2007, with no other countdown than the one made by some Japanese youth that was also there under the light of an almost Full Moon.