ise shrine and okage-yokocho, 伊勢神宮とおかげ横丁

it has been already nearly a month since i escaped from nagoya for the last christmas day to ise shrine. ise is, i think, one of a few most important shinto shrines in japan. it was my first visit there. i was motivated to head there in order to avoid japanesey commercialized christmas atmosphere. it is extremely harsh for a young person (myself) to be totally alone on christmas eve in japan somehow, as it has become a day for lovers... damn. so, i thought there would be nobody at ise SHINTO shrine as there SHOULDNT be any christmasy atmosphere. but my imagination turned out to be totally wrong. sooooooo many couples.... the restaurant i had a lunch even played crazy hilarious christmas music!! thats not what i wanted to see in ise at all.   

although my motivation was to avoid such christmas, my biggest purpose to visit ise was to learn how okage-yokocho was like. one person i interviewed in sado told me that this okage-yokocho was promoted by akafuku, and it is one of good examples of place branding kind of thing. as a planner-wanna-be who live relatively near to ise, it is definitely a shame if i dont know any of it when i become a real planner.

my impression was that it was just fun. nothing more, nothing less. it attracted many people both young and old, male and female. there was something happening, and many activities going on. but somehow i felt as if i were at japanese disney land kind of place all of a sudden. everything looked nice; buildings, shops, whatsoever. i could not feel real life there. 

on the contrary, along with okage-yokocho, there is a street called oharai street, and it created more real atmosphere. i believe that this oharai street was nothing promoted or branded but just developed together with ise shrine. from this aspect, nothing artificial, but super organic. 

thats how i felt in ise. so of course it could be totally different for somebody. but i somehow noticed the need of "reality" in creation, promotion and branding. at least i valued more on oharai street because i thought it was more real and therefore valuable. 

i do not mean to argue that it is meaningless to create something new to attempt to create some new value. what i try to do is like this one actually. but such activities could be strange if there is no reality or realness. 

the loser trip escaping from christmas became surely a great educational trip.