Meoto-Iwa is a holy rock at Futami-Ura in Japan.

This time, I'd like to introduce the Futami-Ura where we visited at after the Uramura oyster festival.

The area where Futami-Ura is in is the ground of the Futami-Okitama shrine and there is a very famous couple of the rock called Meoto-Iwa in Japanese in watching sunrise. (The word "Meoto" means a married couple in Japanese.) Especially the sun rises in the middle of the rocks in the summer solstice.

I'm interested in the sunrise in the summer solstice. But it's very difficult to take the picture, so this time I just update ordinarily scene.

This board describes the history of the shrine.




Usually, shrines have such boards as the picture. And the deity of the shrine is Sarutahiko-No-Mikoto. So we could find some statues of frogs said to be his familiar in the shrine. (I forgot taking any pictures of the statues.)





We could see the Meoto-Iwa after going through a first torii. The sea was very calm at the Uramura oyster festival, but the sea had some billows with strong wind when we visited the shrine after the festival. So it was very different even if both areas locate at same area.




Do you know the manners of worship for Shinto shrines? There was a signboard of the manners and it was also written in English by the shrine pavilion! I've never seen such signboard before.





There were the Meoto-Iwa and a small torii after the shrine pavilion. Can you guess the size of torii by the offertory box? It's really small.
By the way, the Meoto-Iwa is one of the toriis for Okitama-Shinseki that is an incarnation of Sarutahiko-No-Mikoto and also the place where deities come from Tokoyo-No-Kuni. Because of he was drowned by catching his hand in Hirafu-shellfish when he was fishing at Azaka in Ise area on Japanese mythology.



This picture was taken at the closest point to the Meoto-Iwa.
We can see the Shime-Nawa is the stylized straw rope on Shinto and it change at the special event each May 5th, September 5th, and end of December. And the events are bit famous at the area, so we can sometimes watch them on any TV news.

When I walked around the area, I thought that Japanese have such folk customs believing some unique things in great nature like deification and they worship them. It's really easy to guess by Native American's culture. So I'm interested in the fact that there're some such places where we can find some great nature with Japanese mythology in Japan.