Research Trip looking for restaurants serving Japanese Sake – Isasumi Shrine, where I met fancy-free cats

Good evening.
Thank you very much for visiting this blog.

It’s been a while since the last article. Today’s story is about Isasumi Shrine I visited.

I was too busy to update this blog.
Maybe because of over work, gout struck me and I commuted using a cane for a while.
…… Of course, I worked overtime as usual^^;
I always come home very late so I didn’t have enough time to write.

I wish I could settle my work to spend more time for writing, but new works come one after another without break.

I wonder why my colleagues can leave office early……

Let’s get back to the subject.

In the last blog, my report ended when I arrived at Isasumi Shrine and I wrote a brief introduction of this shrine.

This time, I go over the guard frame (“Torii”) of the next photo.

After this Torii, you go through another gate and reach the main building.

This is the main building.

This Sunday was a rainy day (it stopped temporary when I took this photo), and even a typhoon was coming, but there were people more than I expected.

I heard that the building in this photo was a temporary one because the original was lost in a fire in 2008.

I hope that proper house will be built soon.

There are some kids looking at something in the photo.
What they were looking at was ……

A cat walking.

“Dig here, mew mew!” (There is a famous phrase from an old Japanese fairy-tale “Dig here, bowwow”.)

I have a photo to show why the cat was digging the ground, but I don’t put it here in consideration of the cat’s honor.

I leave it to your imagination. X-)

He was working very hard to fill up holes on the ground.

The children were watching this cat.

Is it my good luck that I could catch a unique scene in the photo … Or not ? ^^;

I finished worship, and had a little walk in the shrine.

The first thing I found was this.

The sign said “a Japanese Maple Tree of Matchmaking”.

I couldn’t find something to explain the history, but it’s easy to imagine what that is.

I put some coins for the god on the small shrine, and prayed really hard.

Next one was “Breaking Misfortune Stone”.

I wonder if it really works.
I think that I’m always in the middle of bad luck by curse, so I hope this photo of the stone will be my protection…….

If you leave the main building and go out from another Torii, there is a big garden.

According to the shrine’s web site, the name of this garden is “Ayame En”, and an event called “Ayame Matsuri” is held here from June15th to July5th every year. 100 thousands Ayame (Iris) flowers of 150 varieties bloom, and 300 thousands people visit this event.

The time I visited there was end of September. It was clouded and dull with typhoon weather on that day, but I imagine that I can see beautiful flowers blooming along the river in the garden at Ayame Matsuri.

I couldn’t see Ayame, but I could see a cat again (the middle of the next photo, a white and black cat).