Along the Beach to Gotsu

 

After the temple and shrines in Tsunozu, the next stop is a temple in Gotsu Honmachi and so head off down the small coast road rather than the main road.

When I can I opt to continue along the beach rather than the road....

It's late November and the sea is much more active than usual.

Most of this post will be shots of the wavy sea.....

I pass Majima where I had stopped and explored at the start of the days walk....

The final few photos are not seashots.... peering inside a collapsing wooden garage I found this incredible old American car of some kind..... so much rust that I doubt it could be renovated.....

As I get cose to the mouth of the river a Heron......

And then the final photo, one of the few traditional buildings left in Gotsu. A traditional confectionary-cake-dessert shop..... never actually been inside, though it does garner rave reviews....

The previous post in this series on day 37 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimge was on a couple of shrines in Tsunozu.

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Hashi Beach, Harbour, & Tsuto Shrine

 

After leaving Kushiro, the old San-in Do is a narrow, single-lane road that runs near the rail line and  comes into the back of Hashi completely avoiding the new and busy Route 9

Home to a pretty good "Oceanarium", the beach is part of the Iwami Seaside Park and is very popular in summer.

At the far end of the beach is the tiny harbour for Hashi.

On the hillside up above the harbour is Tsuto Shrine.

This is the main shrine for the town, although just over a hundred years ago an Otoshi Shrine and an Inari Shrine were merged with it. It is yet another local shrine listed in the Engi Shiki.

It is believed that the ruling clan, an offshoot of the clan that colonized the Iwami coastal region in ancient times established a shrine to their ancestors here. Their ancestral deity was Komemochitsuki, and in some way he is connected with mochi rice cakes. They are connected to the clan who founded Kushiro Shrine, and the shrines down near Masuda.

This seems to be the eastern limit of their territory. They were obviously placed here by the Yamato as a check on the power of Izumo. Further East and into Izumo it seems the Mononobe were the clan sent for the same purpose.

In 889 the clan enshrined Tagorihime, the elder of the three Munakata, daughters of Susano.

A myth/legend has it that as a young girl  Tagorihime was too volatile even for Susano, so she was sent away and came ashore on Hashi Beach. A local couple raised here as their own. She never spoke.

Later, a signal fire lit to warn of an attack on Izumo by a "foreign" enemy, caused Tagorihime to reveal her true identity and a dream of Susano that if Tagorihime returned, Izumo would be successful in defeating the enemy. Tagorihime set off but her foster parents chased after her to stop her. She hid behind a rock at what is now a shrine in Gotsu. Her fraught foster parents passed by her and died on the slopes of Asari Fujisan, a coastal mountain near my place. Tagorihime reached Izumo and the enemy was defeated.

The oldest version of this story dates to the 15th century at Hinomisaki Shrine, though it is probably much older. It is said that this shrine  and the one in Gotsu where the rock is were both territories of Hinomisaki Shrine.

Around the main shrine building are an Ebisu Shrine, a Konpira Shrine, a Yasaka Shrine, and a Tenmangu Shrine. The small shrine slightly above the main shrine is believed to enshrine Komemochizuki.

The previous post in this series on the Chugoku and the Iwami Kannon Pilgrimages was on Majima and the Benten Shrine I stopped in at on my walk to start heading up the coast again from Hashi.

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Sufu Beach to Hamada Port

 

After leaving the Hachimangu Shrine I pass by the small beach at Sufu before heading over a little rise and dropping into the wide curving beach and bay of Nagahama.

This is also the westernmost wharf of Hamada Port, the only deep sea port on the Shimane coast.

This western wharf has the Coast Guard station and seems to primarily export cedar logs.

Nagahama is home to several large shrines, but on this trip i passed them by, but did visit one small Inari Shrine.

The beach at Nagaham is well protected by a long wall of terapods with just a few gaps in between.

Near the eastern end of Nagahama, a small harbour for small inshore fishing boats.

Then, the main part of Hamada Port. Numerous silos, plus one of the container-lifting cranes. I know one of the major exports from the port is used cars.... shipped to Russia

I didn't visit, but looks like my kind of place.....

And then the main fishing port. This is the biggest fishing port in Shimane by far. It has a fish market with a couple of touristy restaurants. Squid is one of the biggest "products" landed here....

The fishing port has the infamous Hamada Great Bridge. Absolurely useless, goes to a little island that is just 10 meters from the mainland and that already had a bridge. Brainchild of a former mayor who decided it would make Hamada look like San Francisco. A prime example of the construction excesses of Japan before the bubble burst .

The previous post in this series on the Chugoku and Iwami Kannon Pilgrimages was on the two shrines I visited in Sufu, mentioned in the opening of this post.

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Kikugahama Beach

 

Kikugahama Beach runs from the castle ruins at the base of Mount Shizuki to the port not far from the mouth of the Matsumoto River.

Offshore are a group of inhabited islands, formed 800 million years ago by volcanic activity.

Behind the beach  are old, gnarly, windswept pine trees, and a few high-priced hot sring hotels built among the trees.

It is a very nice bathing beach in the summer, although like most Japanese beaches, the official swimming season is measured in weeks and not months.... to return in a few months to carry on up the Sea of Japan coast on the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage.

I was on quite a brisk walk along the beach as I had been walking for a couple of weeks and would be taking the train home in a couple of hours....

The previous post was on the Hagi Castle ruins at the western end of the beach.

if you would like to subscribe by email, just leave your email address in the comments below. It will not be published or made public. I post new content almost every day, and send out an email about twice a month with short descriptions and links to the most recent posts.