Misogi

I was going to wait for more pictures from my friends, but I think I'll add those later.

Through an ex-JET, I heard about and signed up for a "misogi" Shinto purification ritual about an hour north of Kanazawa on the coast.  Many Japanese people haven't even heard of it, but it's (if the people we did it with say true) thousands of years old.

The basis of the ritual is that water is essential to humans.  We're made of it, we drink it, we bathe in it.  The Shinto faith believes in balance between all things and has a deep reverence for nature.  The ritual is geared to purify and "wake up" the soul.

It's not hard to be woken up when you have to stand chest deep in the Sea of Japan in February in a loincloth.

Myself and 6 other gaijin joined about 20 Japanese men (there were 3 gaijin women who did it but no Japanese women) at a community center/bath house.  We dressed in our "fundoshi"/loincloths and headbands (the women got full robes) and then ran in a processional to the ocean.  It was strange to run by cars and under the highway in very traditional Japanese outfits, not to mention the fact that we were damn close to naked.

Once at the beach, we did a call and response prayer led by a Shinto priest where we did rowing motions together to symbolize rowing out to the sea goddess, then mimed our katanas shearing off our worries and enabling us to let everything go.  Then we ran into the water.

We were instructed to go up to our hearts in the water, then hold that position against the swells and pray as two priests chanted for about 7 minutes.  It was certainly very cold, but I didn't really have a problem with it.  I've been in colder water (Canoe Polar Bear Club!), although not for as long a time. 

I experienced a great clarity of mind while in the water.  You sort of have to in order to focus on maintaining your balance and keeping your lizard brain from making you run out of the water.  Don't know if I can/want to expound on it more than that, but it was pretty amazing.

We came out of the water and performed the same prayer sequence once more, then ran back to the community center to have an utterly sublime dip in the onsen (hot spring).

As we got out, four tour buses full of septuagenarians drove by on the beach, oddly enough. We waved and smiled, they stared.  There was also a TV camera and a guy from the regional newspaper.  We made it onto the second-to-last page of the next day's edition in a tiny write up.  Here's the page:

 

We're down there on the left side middle above the ad for my bank.  Pretty tiny picture, so here it is a bit closer.

There's our pasty hero in the (cold) flesh!

More pictures (if you can stand them) soon.