Black-tailed gulls at Kabushima Shrine in Hachinohe
The Japan Times recently carried a report about Aomori ‘power spots’. The boom has now come to the attention of prefectural authorities, who are eager to milk it for its potential in boosting the ailing tourism market. Not all the power spots are shrines, but several are and here is an extract about Kabushima Shrine. (Incidentally, bird droppings were an important means of divination for onmyodo (Yin-yang) wizards.)
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Power spots and prehistory in beautiful Aomori Prefecture
By TOMOKO OTAKE (July 21, 2012)
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fv20120722a1.html
The moment I got off the bus, though, it wasn’t history (or turnips) that overwhelmed my first impression — but the massive presence of umineko (black-tailed gulls) wherever you looked. At the gate, on the steep steps, the rails, the stone statues and just about everywhere there perched, wheeled and squawked positively mind-boggling numbers of the long-beaked, red-eyed and ominous-looking migrant avians on high alert as they tried to keep their fluffy chicks on this breeding colony safe from predators and inattentive wanderers like myself.
Shrine official Hisanori Furudate explained that the island is the only place in Japan where up to 40,000 of these birds can be observed up close. Indeed, he said that as the shrine has been the gulls’ nesting ground for centuries, many couples visit to be blessed with children.
He added that many visitors who used to gripe about the bird droppings are happy now, as the shrine recently started distributing a wooden certificate to each of those who “are lucky enough” to get un (which in Japanese means both “good fortune” and “poop”) for free.
Good luck is also said to attend those who walk along a short trail around the shrine’s premises three times. But to do so, of course, means dodging the ubiquitous and aggressive birds all around you, in what looks like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s famed 1963 suspense film, “The Birds.”
And while Furudate reassured us that umineko are the tamest of all seagulls, being pecked in my leg from behind made me almost shriek in terror. Consequently, for any future visit, it was pertinent to learn that the gulls are in Kabushima every year from the end of February through early August.
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