{"id":71,"date":"2013-01-04T11:50:12","date_gmt":"2013-01-04T02:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog-en.geo-itoigawa.com\/?p=71"},"modified":"2013-01-04T11:51:44","modified_gmt":"2013-01-04T02:51:44","slug":"happy-new-year-from-the-itoigawa-global-geopark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog-en.geo-itoigawa.com\/?p=71","title":{"rendered":"Happy New Year from the Itoigawa Global Geopark!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u3000\u3000It\u2019s January 4th<\/sup>, our first day back in the office now after entering the Year of the Snake. I hope you all had a warm New Year\u2019s celebration with friends and family.<\/p>\n

\u3000\u3000I spent mine visiting Itoigawa\u2019s main shrine, Amatsu Shrine for hatsumoude<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\"Amatsu<\/a>

Amatsu Shrine in Central Itoigawa<\/p><\/div>\n

\u3000\u3000Hatsumoude<\/i> translates literally to \u2018first pilgrimage.\u2019 It is the Japanese tradition of visiting a shrine or temple during the New Year\u2019s celebration to pray for health and good fortune. Despite its small population, Itoigawa has many shrines and temples which people visit for their first pilgrimage of the New Year. Amatsu Shrine, located near Itoigawa Station and Itoigawa City Hall, is probably one of the most popular shrines in the Itoigawa area.<\/p>\n

\"Visitors<\/a>

Visitors to Amatsu Shrine purchase protective charms and talismans<\/p><\/div>\n

An important part of hatsumoude<\/i> for many Japanese is the purchase of good luck charms and protective talismans. From small satchel-like charms to large goshinya<\/i> or \u2018god arrows\u2019, these objects are said to protect the owner from ill fortune and bring good fortune and health.<\/p>\n

\"Visitors<\/a>

Visitors buy snacks from kiosks at Amatsu Shrine<\/p><\/div>\n

For many an equally (if not more!) important part of the hatsumoude<\/i> experience are these kiosks which sell various snack foods from takoyaki<\/i> (octopus dumplings) to crepes. It\u2019s certainly my favorite part!<\/p>\n

However you celebrated your New Year\u2019s, all of us here at the Itoigawa Global Geopark wish you the best of health and fortune in 2013 and look forward to seeing you soon!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

-Ishikoro<\/p>\n

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\u3000\u3000It\u2019s January 4th, our first day back in the office now after entering the Year of the Snake. I hope you all had a warm New Year\u2019s celebration with friends and family. \u3000\u3000I spent mine visiting Itoigawa\u2019s main shrine, Amatsu Shrine for hatsumoude. \u3000\u3000Hatsumoude translates literally to \u2018first pilgrimage.\u2019 It is the Japanese tradition of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidays","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hiNW-19","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog-en.geo-itoigawa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog-en.geo-itoigawa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog-en.geo-itoigawa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog-en.geo-itoigawa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog-en.geo-itoigawa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog-en.geo-itoigawa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77,"href":"https:\/\/blog-en.geo-itoigawa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog-en.geo-itoigawa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog-en.geo-itoigawa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog-en.geo-itoigawa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}