Izumo Taisha is the second most holy Shinto Shrine in Japan (after Ise) and is its oldest shrine. It is far less visited by foreigners because the middle of nowhere is a fair way to describe its location - see link above - but that is their loss not Izumo's.
Anyway the wife and I went there see what the religious or superstitious Japanese do on January 3rd which is a special festival for good luck called Fukumukae. There were a lot of visitors and an enormous traffic jam. In the photo above (click on images for enlargements) you can see the cars nearing their goal, on our return (by foot) we walked past a good two kilometer traffic jam and as far as could told the same applied no matter which road you took. The photo is taken looking back at the first (and largest) tori from just under the second one. People in the black car at the right could see something like the picture below if they looked at the second tori One of the big differences between Christianity and Shinto is the way that Jesus' strictures about turning a house of God into a market place don't apply. On special occasions the approach to the shrine is filled with stalls offering delicious snacks and various trinkets and souveniers. On our way back we dined on Takoyaki, Okonomiyaki and other similar things purchased from the stalls - delicious. The throng moved at a leisurely walking pace towards the shrine proper, which was, not to anyone's surprise, packed. Under the large sacred rope of the "oracle/prophesy" hall the visitors paid their first respects - bowing, clapping four times and throwing a coin into the collection. Normally once claps twice in a Shinto rite but at Izumo, because the god is sacred to joinings and marriages things are doubled. It is also supposed to be paricularly lucky to throw a coin into the rope and get it to stick there, speaking from experience though it's almost impossible to do. The oracle hall also had more devout people inside it partaking in more of a service, which seemed to be similar in style to the one I witenssed on New Years Eve at our local shrine.
There are various special monsters patrolling to greet the kids (and scare them). In fact it turns out that older kids (and those who are kids at heart) can rent/borrow the costumes to join in the fun, such as the kid in the second photo below. After the first offering the big thing to do is to go into the courtyard of the main shrine itself, which is not normally open. The gate to the main shrine - the eight legged gate - is worth photographing, whether open or not so here it is: And, although the main shrine itself is nearly impossible to see as a unified structure, even from inside the courtyard, some of the other buildings are also rather photogenic. Here is one of the side buildings and the roof eaves of the central shrine building. The X shaped things are stylized crossed swords. I'm not quite sure what the big cigar like things are representing but they seem to go with the crossed swords on quite a few Shinto buildings.
Once we had bowed and paid our respects to the central shrine we were premitted (for a voluntary donation) to drink a saucer of sacred sake and then keep the saucer. The Sake was served by some sort of holy priestesses/sacred virgins called Mikos (some pictures of these ladies - but from Kasuga Taisha in Nara - at my fotologtoo) Then after we left the central courtyard we had the opportunity to buy a lucky arrow or various other good fortune things from various booths around the place Many Japanese bought and then offered ema, which they tied on to trees nearby. Others bought paper fortunes to do the same thing. Paper fortunes are common to both Buddhist and Shinto traditions, but Ema are, as far as I am aware, purely Shinto. An Ema is a wooden plaque with a picture on one side and a wish (written by the worshipper) on the other. At some point the offered Ema are ceremonially burned by a priest so that the wishes can go to the gods. Originally the picture was of a horse (E - picture, Ma - horse), but that didn't last long and surviving Ema from the past are a whole genre of art in themselves. These days many of the Ema offered at New Year seem to feature a picture of the current animal in the 12 year cycle (2005 is the year of the cock in Japan as it is in China). Another thing to do, somewhat less popular, is to walk around the outside of the central courtyard and make devotions to certain individual shrines there. Although not exactly the same this rather reminded me of the way Catholic cathedrals frequently have half a dozen little alters dedicated to certain saints in the aisles and transepts. The walk also allows you to get other glimpes of the central shrine, although you still can't see too much of it. One interesting thing about Izumo is that during the lunar tenth month (October?) all the gods (Kami) from the rest of Japan come to Izumo for a seaside holiday and there are two buildings where the Kami stay during this time. In the rest of Japan this month used to be called Kaminashitsuki (No Gods Month) whereas in Izumo it was called Kamiaritsuki (Gods here month). And with that I think I'll stop my holiday from work too, closing with this final picture of the whole shrine complex