On to the point of my post today. Shisa Dogs. I read about these little guys before I got here. I was told that you can't walk five steps without running into one of them. That was a very true statement. There was a shisa at the baggage claim in the Naha airport. It was actually pretty cool and had I not been at the end of my proverbial rope I would have taken a picture.
We bought these to put outside our door. I guess most people buy this kind of thing at the end of the tour but a wise woman told me that she always buys her souvenirs as she discovers them. That way, she has memories of the item in the place she wants to remember and she isn't spending a ton of money when she's also trying to move across the world.
The story of the shisa is that a Chinese emissary gave a necklace to the Ryuku king with a shisa on it. There was a village that was being tormented by a sea dragon, who was eating the people and destroying their land. When an attack happened while the king was visiting the village everyone hid, but the priestess (Okinawans believe women are spiritually superior) had a vision that the shisa would save them so she sent a child to tell the king to hold his shisa up to the dragon. He did just that and the earth shook and a giant boulder fell and crushed the dragon's tail. It died. From then on they used a shisa to protect them from the dragon's spirit.
Every single home, business, shrine, everything has shisas. The one with the open mouth eats the bad spirits and the one with the closed mouth lets good ones in.
I realize that it's just a little trinket souvenir, but it makes me feel a little better to know that we have two little guardians outside our door. The last thing this anxiety ridden mom needs is a pissed off sea dragon trying to get to us.
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