Okinawa and Incense 2: "Lodgings and Rapping Sounds"

More than 10 years ago, before I lived in Okinawa, I was still an Okinawa novice and came here for the purpose of scuba diving. At that time, there were no low-cost carriers (LCCs), and with only JAL, ANA, or at best Skymark, air tickets to Okinawa were still quite expensive. Out of a budget of 110,000 to 120,000 yen for a 4-day, 3-night trip to Okinawa, about 70,000 yen went to the ticket price, and boat diving in the Kerama Islands cost about 25,000 yen for three dives a day with full equipment rental, so I had to scrape together accommodation and food expenses from the remaining 15,000 to 20,000 yen.
Naturally, since you can't cut food costs that much, you end up looking for places to stay cheaply. At that time, even though the internet existed, there wasn't much information on cheap lodgings in Naha, so I relied exclusively on Okinawa travel guidebooks.

Once, after diving, when I said, "I'll look for a place to stay tonight from now on, and if I can't find a cheap one, I'll sleep outside," the diving shop staff said, "Sleeping outside is dangerous because there are habu snakes even in Naha," and introduced me to the Okinawa Seamen's Hall next to Tomari Port. Thanks to the shop being a member of the Seamen's Hall union, I was able to stay in a single-use room for three people for 3,000 yen per night. It seems you can stay there now even if you are not a union member.
On another trip, the day I arrived in Naha, planning to go diving from the next morning, I stayed one night at "Min-〇 Hikari no Ie Annex" (still in business) in Kume, Naha City.
The room was a private room, like an apartment with a balcony, the shower and toilet were shared, and the air conditioner was coin-operated (100 yen per hour).

I chose it prioritizing cheapness, but when I was strangely restless and finally about to fall asleep,
Bang! Bang!
a rapping sound occurred, as if someone had clapped their hands with all their might. Once would be fine, but every time I started to doze off, I was woken up by the rapping sound.

Even now, I'm not afraid of spirits, but at the time, I held the contradiction of being afraid of such stories even though I didn't believe in ghosts.
While pretending to be asleep, I searched for the source of the sound. The sound came from the balcony. Perhaps the balcony was connected to the next room, and someone was playing a prank by coming to the balcony of this room and clapping their hands.
However, if that were the case, there should be other sounds like footsteps, but there were none at all, and above all, there was no explanation for why the sound rang at the exact moment my consciousness was about to fade. In the first place, there is no reason for someone to come to another person's balcony at a lodging in the middle of the night and clap their hands. Conversely, it's scarier if such a person exists. I tried to find a reason in a direction other than ghosts, and even considered impossible possibilities. If it's not a prank, then it must be a ghost. But I don't have the courage to turn on the light and check. I'm afraid to even open my eyes slightly, so I have no choice but to pretend to be asleep. If there really were a ghost, I would be so scared I wouldn't be able to recover.

However, even after that, every time my consciousness was about to fade, the rapping sound similar to applause continued, Bang! Bang!, and pretending to be asleep didn't work. Is the price cheap because it's a haunted lodging? I didn't expect this to happen from being too frugal. The other guests I passed in the hallway looked like they were staying for work, such as road construction, but are they all okay? So far, I haven't heard any screams from other rooms.
I have to sleep eventually; tomorrow morning at 6:30, the diving shop staff will come to pick me up. I'm going by boat to the world-beautiful Kerama Islands (designated as a national park in 2014) for my once-a-year diving pleasure. I want to be allowed to sleep, and lack of sleep is not good for safety either. I have no choice but to sleep no matter what.

So, after worrying for about 50 minutes while pretending to be asleep, I suddenly thought,
"Come to think of it, (even though it's so urban and developed now) Naha was also a battlefield."
When I thought that, the subsequent rapping sounds subsided, and I was able to sleep until morning and enjoy diving safely. It was the first time I thought I might not be able to sleep until morning because of rapping sounds. The rapping that night remained in my heart for a long time, and I thought that if there were rapping sounds or some kind of signal, there might be an existence that wants me to turn my consciousness toward it.

Since then, I hadn't encountered rapping sounds worth remembering, but at a guest house in a detached house in Nago City in January 2021, I was attacked by rapping sounds? and tremendous sleepiness.
The Japanese-style room I stayed in had shoji screens instead of curtains, but even though I was bathed in the morning sun, I went back to sleep, and I ended up sleeping until 10:00 AM or 2:00 PM, which is impossible even at home in a room I'm staying in for the first time, and even after waking up, the sleepiness as if I had taken sleeping pills continued for 4 to 5 days. However, there was a sense of security, and I felt like the fatigue of many years of work was being removed.
That sleepiness was later told to be a DNA change by spirits and heroic spirits through Alisa's channeling after I returned to Tokyo (refer to Okinawa and Incense "Heroic Spirits and Tosa no To").

At the same time as the sleepiness, there was a mysterious sound of a thud!! on the ceiling and a bang! in the alcove, which was different from the rapping sounds I had heard before. And it was at a timing as if to knock me awake during the day. By the way, it was January and it was during the COVID period, so I was the only guest in the large detached house.
The thud!! on the ceiling was directly above my head, and the bang! in the alcove was at 8:00 AM after it had become completely bright, and I was perfectly woken up by that sound. Also, from the parking lot on the property next to the lodging, I heard a metallic sound like a gong being struck, a splash! Of course, not all mysterious sounds are necessarily mysterious, and I thought there was a high possibility that the sound in the parking lot was a physical phenomenon since there were scrapped cars and bulky waste.

However, unlike when I was scared of rapping sounds at a cheap lodging in Naha more than 10 years ago, I wasn't scared at all, and when I offered the Okinawa incense I brought from Tokyo, it became perfectly quiet. Partly because the landlady, the owner of the lodging, was from the same hometown, when I said on the first day, "I'm going to offer incense, so please lend me an incense burner," she lent it to me smoothly. I guess there are rarely such guests. The owner's family were immigrants from Hokkaido, but they lent it to me without questioning the reason.

Since I had borrowed an incense burner, I offered incense in the room after the rapping sounds occurred. I don't offer incense during trips because hotels are non-smoking rooms, but I do offer it when I sleep in a Buddhist altar room at a guest house on Kudaka Island. I'm used to it because I was taught a simple way by a grandmother who is a Kami-nchu (shaman) in Naha.

During the day of the day I was woken up by the rapping sound, I spoke brightly to the landlady in the living room on the first floor:
"This place has quite unusual rapping sounds like thud! or bang!. I thought it was the ceiling or the hallway, but the sound came from the alcove, so I think they probably want me to offer incense, so I offered some."
The landlady laughed and said,
"Geez lol, I've been running the lodging for about 6 years, but you're the first guest to talk about rapping sounds, Mr. Ike〇 (laughs)."
But immediately after that, from the Japanese-style room on the second floor where I was staying,
Bang!!
a sound occurred. It was amazing timing. It was as if to say,
"I'm not lying!"
That was the sound from the alcove that woke me up at 8:00 AM. When I pointed to the room on the second floor where I was staying and said, "Look," the landlady was surprised, saying,
"That's true..."
After that, while we were talking, the sound like a gong being struck that I heard yesterday came from the parking lot on the adjacent property, and the landlady went to check the parking lot from the bathroom window.
"There's no one there..."
"You don't have to worry about it that much. My parents' house in Kochi is an old wooden building, so the hallway makes a thud! sound in the middle of the night due to the humidity. Not all sounds are mysterious. There are also sounds that are ringing physically. Either way, if they want me to offer incense, I've already offered it, so there's no problem."
I explained it to her.
These rapping sounds, or rather mysterious sounds, calmed down when I offered incense and never rang again. And when I returned to Naha City for an engraving exhibition on January 24th, I talked to Mr. Akada, who takes care of me in Okinawa, about the mysterious sound in the alcove, and he told me about the god of the alcove:
"In Okinawa, there is something called Tukushin (alcove god), you know. There is a god in the alcove. There is a god who protects the men of the house, the head of the household, and you should properly offer sake and worship it. It's not as famous as Hinukan (Fire God), but try searching for it."

Ah, it must be that god. The one that made a loud bang! in the alcove at 8:00 AM.
This lodging (guest house) is managed by immigrants from outside the prefecture, so they probably don't know about the god of the alcove. Even I, who lived in Okinawa for a year and a half, learned about it for the first time at this time. The room I rented in Naha City didn't have an alcove.
In the end, at this lodging, I offered incense at a total of four places: the living room on the first day, and the Japanese-style room I stayed in, the rooftop, and the room on the third floor I moved to on the final day. I don't know the reason, but I felt like offering it. As for the rooftop, for some reason, a desk and a chair were neatly set up facing the sea, as if to say, "Please offer incense here."

The painter who introduced me to this lodging taught me, "You got along very well with the existence that was originally on that land." I don't have the consciousness that I got along particularly well, but it was very comfortable, and I was able to relax as if I hadn't stayed there for the first time. I slept better than in my own room in Tokyo.
Except for the last night, no other guests came, and I was able to monopolize the detached house by myself, but I think there was really some connection that I stayed for 10 nights at a lodging I stayed at for the first time.

Later, when I asked the owner's wife of the lodging, she said that for the first year after moving in, she offered incense to the Fire God (Hinukan) on the 1st and 15th of every month, but since the smoke caused asthma attacks in her daughter, she hasn't offered it since then.
"So that's why, I thought the ash in the incense burner I borrowed was hard and not used at all."
"The incense Mr. Ike〇 offered in the living room on the first day had little smoke, didn't it? I was surprised that there is Okinawa incense with little smoke."
"There are several types of Okinawa incense, and price and performance are proportional. The most expensive Yomitan incense is easy to light and has little smoke. Arakaki Incense Shop's Okinawa black incense is standard, and both the price and smoke are in the middle. The Chinese-made ones are the cheapest, but they have a lot of smoke and are easy to get damp, and above all, the color and length are different, so I don't recommend them. How should I put it, they are knock-offs made overseas to look like them. Actually, when I sent the Chinese-made ones from Okinawa to Tokyo by courier, they were damp and couldn't be used."
"There are differences in incense, too."

"The one I offered in the living room was the black incense from Arakaki Incense Shop, which I brought after having it sent from Okinawa. On the first day I stayed, the painter took me to Buma Gongen and I offered it, but there was one that didn't light because the wind was strong, so I brought it back and offered it since it was a waste. My incense might have a higher vibration because I've put some effort into it."

The landlady of the lodging was attending the painting class of the painter who lent me the car, and she was kind to me in various ways because I was a guest of the painter. During my stay, she asked if I had a long relationship with the painter.
"This is the second time we've met. Last February, I was coincidentally taken to the painter's atelier by an acquaintance."
"Eh, it doesn't look like that. I thought you were acquaintances from much longer ago."
"Ah, even though it's the second time we've met, we've been consulting about various things over the phone."
Even though it's the second time we've met, she lent me her car for over a week for practice while I was staying in the north, and she took me to power spots like Buma Gongen, so it's exceptional treatment.

When I returned to Tokyo and asked my fellow channeler Alisa about the painter's kindness,
"She says, 'You don't have to look for a reason for people being kind to you.' She is a person with deep love, and since it was something she wanted to do for you, she says you should just open your heart and say thank you."
That was the answer.
Indeed, the painter often tells me that I don't need to thank her. When I go to Okinawa, I am very grateful to receive kindness, so I have decided to accept her goodwill without hesitation. I hope I can return the favor somewhere someday, and as I lived in Okinawa, I realized later that it is one of the spirits of "sharing" that remains in Okinawa.
Later, the painter was also able to receive a memento of the potter Takeki Shima through my connection, so I thought that kindness and goodwill were properly returned.

Continued article:Okinawa and Incense 3 "Heroic Spirits and Tosa no To" | Ike-san (note.com)
Previous articleOkinawa and Incense 1 "Kami-nchu Uehara-sensei, God's Signal" | Ike-san (note.com)
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