Naiku - Part 2 - and shopping and eating

Picking up where I left off yesterday - the graceful bridge over the Isuzugawa River is being rebuilt. This rebuilding is a theme that would recur during our visit to this shrine, considered to "hold the most honored place among all the shrines in Japan." The shrine may have been established as early as 4 BC, and all of the buildings are considered to be ancient. However all of the buildings are rebuilt, exactly, every 20 years.
I'm not certain that the reconstruction of the bridge is part of this other rebuilding. We crossed the river over a temporary concrete and wood bridge.
At Geku we had been impressed with the organized groups that were making a pilgrimage to the shrine. In some cases, marching (or nearly marching) men in business suits, who were then escorted into an outer courtyard (we could watch, but not photograph) for prayers with the priest. Much of the traffic at the outer shrine seemed to be of this sort.
But the grounds of the Inner Shrine were bustling with a steady stream of people, many who had come on tour buses. It was a cold Monday with rain threatening, and I kept asking Kenny if he was certain this wasn't a holiday.
At both of these shrines, it was difficult to see much more than the roof lines of the buildings. All the major shrine buildings, and most of the smaller auxiliary shrines are off-limits and behind fences. In some cases it is possible to see an outer courtyard, but not much else.
But because of this rite of rebuilding every 20 years, each shrine has next to it a large fenced in area, with a set of stairs as appropriate. The "unused" stairs go right up to a blank fence, waiting for the next rebuilding.
We were able to see various store houses on the grounds, and a number of areas set aside for music and dance performances. The store houses are for food offerings for the goddess Amaterasu-Omikami, and it is her sacred mirror that is said to be housed in the most inner part of the main shrine.
The grounds are wooded, with the mountains in the background. There are some exceptionally large and old Japanese cedar trees growing on the grounds.
Shopping and Eating
Of course all these pilgrims need to eat, and shop, it seems. Just outside the entrance to the shrine there is a area of streets full of small shops and restaurants, and we joined the crowds, looking for lunch and whatever else we could find.
Kenny had two missions. One was to find a place that served noodles Ise style, and the other to help me find the local bean and rice confection, which we knew I could eat.
We tried one restaurant, and it was only after we were seated that we understood they didn't serve noodles. Kenny ordered lunch. There was nothing on the menu that I could eat, so he ordered a glass of ume, or plum wine, for me.
His lunch came. And then they brought me a meal. And we were puzzled, to say the least. It took a few minutes of trying to decipher the English menu, but the restaurant served an set lunch named "Ume," sashimi and rice with barley and some other goodies. None of which I could eat.
We wandered around the plaza, listened to drummers performing, and found my candy - pounded sweet rice topped with sweet bean paste, all steamed, sort of the usual moochi turned inside out. It was the packaging that really charmed me. There was an outer pink paper wrapper, then inside, a wooden box, decorated with a woodblock-type print of the store, a little postcard and a holder for a small wooded spoon, all held together with a red ribbon. I didn't even want to open it.
We stopped in a small shop and sampled some plum wine, and I bought a bottle, so that made up for lunch. (I also inadvertently bought a small bottle of sake.)
We did finally find the Ise-style noodles, which Kenny says are quite good. It was beginning to rain, so we found our bus and made our way back to the inn.