Wedded Rocks

If there's one thing Dad and I have learned on his trip, it's that traveling in Japan is an exercise in confronting your - no doubt - false expectations about everything, especially famous tourist sites.  In other words, you have a set of expectations about a given place that you might not even realize are shaping your way of thinking, you feel a sense of "Huh?" when you arrive, and then you spend all afternoon entertaining yourself by teasing apart what exactly surprised you and what exactly you'd anticipated.  This happens everywhere, often with pretty hilarious self-realizations.  

Dad's ultimate expectation confrontation was our trip to Nagano to see the Japanese Alps.  My ultimate expectation confrontation was our trip to see the wedded rocks of Meoto-Iwa after spending the morning at Jingu shrines of Ise.  It was a true Mona Lisa moment.

By some accounts, these rocks are the most famous, most iconic image of Japan.  These rocks symbolize the deities Izanami and Izanagi who created Japan, and I'd always been mildly curious about seeing them.  

Judging from most photos I'd seen, I was expecting gargantuan boulders looming far in the distance with a normal sized torii gate perched atop the "male" rock.  Perhaps a glimpse of the shy Mt. Fuji in the distance.  I was expecting the rocks to be far out in the depths of the ocean and a deserted beach with a few Japanese people sitting in the sand, perhaps with binoculars, trying to make out silhouette of a symbolic representation of their creation myth.  No doubt, this illusion had been etched in my memory by multiple tourist information booklets that describe Japanese people "overcome with emotion" as they encounter the beauty of this enduring symbol of Japan.

I was pretty shocked to find that the rocks are but a stone throw away from a viewing platform crowded with Japanese tourists, with vendors hawking all kinds of souvenirs.  Furthermore, the rocks are actually a miniature of what they seem in photos.  The taller rock is perhaps a little over my height.  The torii gate looked to be about two feet tall.  There were also two ominous black crows perched on top of the rock as Dad and I wandered by and took a few photos.

Ah, expectations.