The Yamanote line passes through places in Tokyo most visitors have never thought they would see. Some of them are little more than two platforms around the tracks, others are major exchange stations. Like Osaki.

 

This is where the trains diverge, or converge if you are coming from the other direction. Here, trains go off to Shinjuku and Shibuya in one direction, and to Shinagawa and Tokyo in the other.

Surrounded by offices

 Osaki is a big station situated in the middle of an office and residential area, but there is not much which would make a visitor look twice. It is not really a place that you would visit on your own initiative, unless you have business there. As so often in Tokyo, what was a factory during the post-war period has been turned into condominiums (or ”mansions” in Japanese) and office blocks, in the case of Osaki housing Sony offices, although the corporate headquarters are located in nearby Shinagawa.

The factory was not only converted to offices and housing, however. Cross the road on the walkways from the station and you end up in one of the largest shopping centers in southern central Tokyo.

Cavernous shopping center

 The cavernous space – a carbon copy of other shopping centers in the near Tokyo suburbs – houses the usual selection of stores and restaurants. If you need to pick up on your shopping, there are worse places to spend a rainy day.

 

But if you could not care less about urban city renewal projects, there are still a couple of places to see around the area. The restaurants here are not the upscale French or Italian restaurants you will find in Shibuya; this is an area where the factories may be gone, but the working-class atmosphere remains throughout the neighborhoods. Dining options range more toward the filling and satisfying, if they are not designed to go with beer.

 

Tokyo swallowed villages

 This used to be rice fields when before Edo became Tokyo, watered by the nearby Meguro river (sad to say, the cherry trees here have been replaced by a freeway). What was villages for the peasants toiling away at growing rice and vegetables for the palaces of the nobles became incorporated and swallowed up by the expanding city.

 

 

 But like in so many cases around Tokyo, the villages swallowed up meant their shrines remained. Osaki is outside the ”green belt” established by Tokugawa Ieyasu as a defense perimeter for Edo Castle, with the temples providing additional spiritual protection against evil spirits seeking to invade the realm.

The villages outside the green belt rarely had their own temples, since maintaining monks were costly and required the donation of an annuity by a noble family.

Village shrines, however, were a different matter. Then as now, but perhaps more then, the maintenance of the shrines were a community matter. The neighborhood would work together to celebrate at the end of the first harvest (you typically get two rice harvests per year in the Kanto area, where Tokyo is located). And they would work together to maintain their shrines.

As shrines and temples separated during the Meji restoration, when Shinto became the national religion, the shrines rose in importance.

 

Shrine visit travel

 With the increased freedom that the Meji restoration brought to the Japanese, travel became possible. During the shogunate, travel required a permission from the lord of the province where you resided, and the letter of permission had to be shown to the samurai at the way stations established along the approved roads leading out of the big cities. Leaving your place of residence without permission could lead to imprisonment.

When people were able to travel, they started taking the newly established trains, but the price of a ticket – while affordable – was still out of reach for ordinary people. But walking to your nearby temples or shrines were within reach for even the poorest of residents.

As Japan opened up, not only the major shrines and temples saw pilgrimages rise, but the nearby temples and shrines as well. And for the faithful, there was a simple way of showing their devotion: The Goshuin.

In ancient Japan, printing – while available using the highly sophisticated wood cutting techniques – was still expensive. To make the word of Buddha available, parishioners would copy the sutras by hand, and receive a written blessing when they were finished. As the blessing contained impressive temple stamps, it became known as ”goshuin” (御朱印), a word that describes the red temple stamp.

 

Special book for temple stamps

 Fast forward to the Meji restoration, and collecting goshuin (in a special little book, goshuinshou (御朱印帳)). You can buy these books, in standardized formats that will take the goshuin from any temple, from any bookstore. Or from the temple ir shrine itself. Getting the goshuin made takes an extra fee, as the making involves both the stamping (very hard to get right unless you are a professional), and some Japanese calligraphy.

 

 If you are on a bucket list trip, getting a goshuinshou at Meiji Jingu and goshouin from Senso-Ji and Yasukuni Jinja will tich the bucket list boxes. But if you are a serious traveler, go out of the way to get them. It is a great document of your trip, and tells the stories of where you have been in a much better way than any photo of the tour group ever will.

Osaki neighborhood shrine stamps

 And where better to get your goshuin than at a small, out-of-the way neighborhood shrine? And as luck would have it, there are two neighborhood shrines in Osaki that will give you a goshuin.

The Kifune Shrine is located on the other side of the Sony office complex. The site is quite large, and has several small subsidiary shrines or altars, perhaps not surprising since it has been in operation for more than 1300 years.

The Irugi Shrine is probably not quite as old (nobody knows how old) but has more of a neighborhood feel. It was originally located much closer to the Meguro River, but moved due to the constant flooding; the shrine was completely destroyed during the second world war, and only rebuilt in 1978. Now, it is a three-minute walk due west from Osaki Station.

The neighborhood feel is evident in the park surrounding the shrine itself, full if stone statues of Tottoro and other cartoon characters, including several pokemon.

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