Tsubaki Ookami Yashiro Shrine（椿大神社）

Life is a journey. You keep walking to your destination until the very end, but sometimes you get lost in the road, can't decide where to go at the intersection. The god in Tsubaki Ookami Yashiro Shrine will help you find the way.

Tsubaki Ookami Yashiro Shrine （椿大神社）is located in Suzuka, Mie, and the headquarter shrine for Sarutahiko God. Sarutahiko guided the grand son of the supreme god Ninigi to the designated point (legendarily in Miyazaki in Kyushu Island) when Ninigi came down from the heaven to earth. You can refer back to my previous postings for its brief knowledge (Rice and religion). Thanks to this myth story, Sarutahiko is popular to guide your way when you get lost, in particular, mentally. In other words, Sarutahiko worshipers want a spiritual guard/guide when they feel lost in their life; what to decide.

Sarutahiko's wife, Ameno Uzume is also enshrined in a different alter in the same shrine. Ameno Uzume is a performance goddess based on the myth of "Amano Iwato". In the myth, the supreme goddess Amaterasu got depressed at the sight of her young brother's brutal behaviors in her heaven and hid herself into a cave. Amaterasu, whose name means "lightening the heaven", is the sun deity and the world got dark after her disappear. Other gods and goddess thought of the way to let her out and decided to pretend they're enjoining outside the cave. They had a party and had a happy time to lure Amaterasu out of the cave and Ameno Uzume got topless and danced. Everybody at the party got amused at her performance and Amaterasu finally got out of the cave because she simply wanted to take a glance of what was going on. This myth gave Ameno Uzume a characteristic as a great performer enough to attract the supreme goddess. In this sense, Ameno Uzume is popular for performers such as actors, dancers, singers etc... to pay worships.  

The tomb.
No allowed to stabilize the focus..

Apart from these "spiritual guides", the shrine has a few of interesting spots. One is Sarutahiko's tomb. We have no clues on whether or not the deities were the real existence technically and it tends to be considered as an imaginary in most cases. Sarutahiko isn't an exception and nobody could not detect any clues of Sarutahiko's real existence. However, interestingly, there is the tomb. Of course, I suppose that there are no bodies beneath the tomb but it's full of something invisible. I tried to take the photo many times but the focus in my frame couldn't stabilize every time I shot. It looked to me that the god tried stopped me from having a clear photo to hide himself. Technically, I should have been able to take a clear photo shot under the situation I had at that time but eventually I had to give up since the tomb itself didn't allow me to do so.

The second interesting place in the shrine is the "Keep-Out" sacred point where nobody, including priests. can enter into. It's said to be the very first place where Ninigi firstly landed on the earth from the heaven. As mentioned above, Sarutahiko was a guide and he firstly met Ninigi at the currently "Keep-Out" point in the shrine. The place is also being sacred and I felt something invisible there.

"Keep-Out"

The main alter