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tents of nomadic tribes. A message embodied in the very architecture of Shinto: The world is in flux, life moves, the rivers flow, and even the homes of the gods are but temporary shelters. Someday they, too, will be folded down like tents and put away.
    I buy a bag filled with small clay pebbles and go outside to try my luck. In front of the cave a wooden balcony juts out over a jumble of boulders and salt spray. The sea. throws herself up against the cliff face again and again, but the shrine remains just out of reach, tucked into its cave.
    In among the sea rubble, at the bottom of the cliff, is a large misshapen boulder called “Turtle Rock,” and atop the turtle’s back is a shimenawa rope, looped in a circle. The rope signifies the presence of a kami and marks the area inside the circle as hallowed. Being (a) a Westerner and (b) a male, my first thought at seeing this holy circle, perched atop a large boulder at the bottom of a cliff, is to wonder, “How the heck did they ever get that rope down there?” I imagine it is one of the duties of the novice priests. “Send Hiroshi down, he’s the new guy.” Or maybe they tossed it, Hula Hoop style. The mysteries of the universe never held such appeal for me as the mystery of how they got that rope out there onto that boulder.
    The circle on Turtle Rock is part of a sacred shooting gallery. Remember the clay pebbles I bought earlier? It is time to win favor with the gods. At Udo Jingu you lean over and toss the pebbles at the rock. If they land and stay within the circle you will be rewarded with great fortune, long life, good health—the usual stuff. People crowd the edge of the boardwalk, laughing and flinging pebbles. The sea is afloat with them, they cover boulder tops and rock ledges like rabbit droppings. Mounds of pebbles are inside the rope circle, but most have bounced out. Many are wildly off the mark. Not me. When it comes to tossing clay pebbles onto large rocks, I am pretty well the Omnipotent Master of the Universe. I try not to snort too loudly at the awkward misfires of my fellow worshippers. A voice beside me says, “He’s cheating.”
    I looked around to see who was doing the cheating. They were referring to me.
    “I beg your pardon,” I said, scanning the crowd with a kind of How Dare You! look on my face, but no one would meet my eye. I continued tossing the pebbles. I was going for the world record slam-dunk pebble toss.
    “What a cheater.”
    I spun around to face my detractors. Nothing. No one said a word. Finally, out of pity I suppose, an elderly couple stepped out toward me. She was wearing a trim blue elderly-aunt-type skirt, her hair suspiciously black. The gentleman she was with had heavy-framed glasses, a string necktie, and a balding head with strategically combed strands of camouflage.
    The man smiled at me. He had his camera out and for a minute I thought he was going to ask if he could take my picture. This happens occasionally. Japanese tourists like to take snapshots of exotic white people in Japan, along with the usual pictures of flora and fauna. High-school yearbooks inevitably have photos of the school trip to Nara and Kyoto, with students posing first beside temple deer and then beside foreign tourists. In both cases, whether they are feeding the deer or feeding the foreigners, the students have the same nervous smiles. Personally, I hate posing for strangers’ photographs and I usually try to work a surreptitious middle-finger somewhere into the pose. But no, the man didn’t want my photo. He wanted to correct my error.
    “You are not doing it properly,” he said. “Men must use their left hand when they throw the pebbles. Women may use either, but it is better if they use their left hand also.”
    So I switched hands. I missed every shot. The crowd around me began chuckling and saying things like, “Jōzu desu ne,“ and other such derisive comments, so I decided to stop.
    The gentleman who had corrected me