Memories of visiting Kitano Tenmangu Shrine

Thank you for your hard work!

The first half of this year is already over before I realize it, and this is Umino who is horrified that time is passing faster and faster with each passing year. (I feel like I haven’t done anything in particular yet this year …).

It’s July in 2022, and the second half of the year has quietly begun amidst the heat and typhoons (and it’s already been a week … another summer horror phenomenon?)

Now that we are halfway through the year, I would like to talk about my memories of Kitano Tenmangu Shrine, which I visited during New Year’s, the opposite time of the year from now (Please don’t say “What do you mean?” “Why now?”).

Nearly 20 years ago, on the three days of the New Year, I went to “Kitano Tenmangu Shrine”, where Michizane Sugawara, the god of learning, is enshrined, to pray for my success in the high school entrance examinations I was preparing for at the time.

My family (myself, my parents, my maternal grandparents, and my younger brother) and my mother’s sister’s family (my mother’s sister, her husband, and three children), and a total of 11 people took the train to Kyoto!

I really wanted to take a bus from JR Enmachi Station, but on the first three days of the New Year, all buses heading to Kitano Tenmangu Shrine were extremely crowded! However, taking a cab would have cost a lot of money … so we had no choice but to walk from Enmachi Station (a little more than 20 minutes’ walk).

We were supposed to be heading for “Kitano- Tenmangu Shrine” on foot, but … no one was quite sure where the first “Kitano- Tenmangu Shrine” was anyway. We didn’t have a smart phone at the time, so we wandered around with a paper map, relying on our intuition … but we never got there. A while after, the children, including me, complained, “I don’t want to walk anymore! Eventually, we went out to a big street, picked up a cab, and finally arrived at “Kitano Tenmangu Shrine”. (Then why didn’t we just take a cab in the first place?)

Sankomon Gate (Important Cultural Property)

We split up and headed for the main shrine together, with the women complaining boo-boo that the male team who got in later arrived before the female team who got in the cab first.

In the midst of so many people, being concerned about my almost 80-year-old grandfather (why did we make him walk for more than 20 minutes?), we finally arrived at the main shrine building.

adsense2

Shaden (National Treasure)

As one would expect from a building designated as a national treasure, there was a solemn atmosphere in the air, and even though I, who was in the third year of junior high school at the time, was overwhelmed by the atmosphere.

I made a firm request at the main shrine, wrote on an ema(votive tablet), “May I be accepted into high school safely,” and dedicated it and my road to prayer for success, which had been filled with so many things, had come to an end.

After eating lunch at a stall and buying whatever we wanted, we decided we didn’t want to walk any more and took a cab to Enmachi Station on the way home. We then took a train back to our hometown.

After that, thanks to my prayers for success (and hard study), I passed the school of my choice without a hitch! I was so happy at that time.

And now, at my age, I often wonder how I would feel if I went to “Kitano Tenmangu Shrine” again. So I hope to visit “Kitano Tenmangu Shrine” again someday.

You may “visit” the shrine on the first three days of the new year, but it is well worth the “visit” to experience the solemnity of the main shrine, so please visit the shrine!

Thank you very much for reading to the end. See you next time!

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Author

海野さざなみ(Umino Sazanami)
A "Awamijin" (Shiga Prefecture resident) suddenly appeared on the "Kyoto People's Blog.
He is a man in his 30s with a shaved head and glasses. His hobbies include reading, creative writing (novels), and cooking.