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Japanese Shrine / Mystery Glass Shard

McAvennie

McAvennie

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Mar 13, 2003
Messages
3,998
Okay,

This is a "Literally just happened to me... ", so much so I am still having shivers and trying to figure it out.

So, I have been working in Japan for the past month and landed home yesterday. My wife came over near the end of my stay and we travelled briefly to a few cities around the country.

In Kyoto we hired a guide to take us around and we visited the Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine. This site is popular for people to visit to pray for success in business and one of the traditions there involves a white horse in a glass cabinet. The glass is broken in one corner and visitors try to throw their business card through the gap and onto the plinth the horse stands on. Our guide told us this story and when we looked in there were perhaps five cards on the plinth and hundreds strewn across the floor. Naturally, I decided to try my luck and with some calculated angling and a strong flick managed to land mine right on the plinth under the horse's carrot. Our guide was gobsmacked and visibly shook by seeing me do this, stating she had never seen anyone come near to doing this.

You can read a bit about horses in Shinto here, that references the shrine in Kyoto...
http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2016/06/horsing-around-at-shinto-shrines.html?m=1

So, I have told the story about my luck to a lot of colleagues since coming back. Advising them any future success of the company is thanks to me.

Cut to this evening. Arriving back at my apartment I go to open the building door when it flies open before I touch the handle, opened by a guy on the other side who happened to be Japanese, long straggly hair and staring, slightly wild eyes. Never seen him before in the building and it startled me somewhat, but nothing out of the ordinary in that.

A few hours later I am sat in the sofa and absent-mindedly put my hand on the back ledge only to feel that there was something solid sat there. Picked it up and it was a shard of glass. Now we have not broken anything glass and I cannot find any other shards or evidence of something being broken. We also move the sofa quite often so anything broken would not be able to sit there unnoticed for a long time.

It then struck me that the shard was the exact same shape as the missing piece from the glass cabinet in Kyoto. Looking at a picture confirmed more or less that it is the exact shape. It even has the same rain-smeared streaks on it as the glass at the shrine.

Chills went down my spine as I realised this and then remembered the unusual Japanese man at the entrance to my building.

Cannot think of anywhere a broken piece of glass would just appear from in my apartment. Coincidence I guess that it seems to fit the missing piece from Kyoto. Anyhow, I am feeling a little confused and a bit unsettled!
 

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Thankyou for posting about this experience, I found it very interesting! I honestly don't know what to make of it, I agree that it's an odd coincidence. The man coming out of your apartment building shortly before you found the shard adds an extra bit of strangeness (and shivers) to it all too.
When you say that you absent-mindedly reached behind you, was there a reason that you did that?
Was that the first time you have sat there since returning from your trip as it's a possibility that
as you have been away for a month, maybe something got smashed or broken while you were away and your wife forgot to mention?
 
Sorry that wasn't very clear I meant to say was it the first time you sat there since returning from your trip? If you sat there last night for instance can you recall reaching behind you then as you would have found it then were it there already.
 
fizzy55 said:
Sorry that wasn't very clear I meant to say was it the first time you sat there since returning from your trip? If you sat there last night for instance can you recall reaching behind you then as you would have found it then were it there already.
Click to expand...

Yep, first time I had sat there since I was back. I think my wife would have told me if it has been something she broke while I was away though.

I am thinking it could be from a picture frame but I don't remember breaking one, certainly not in the last few months. Even if it has somehow been sat there for months/years I think it is pretty weird that I found it now just a few days after an experience involving another piece of glass with a small bit the same shape missing.

And Shadycavalier, yes, I doubt this is an ancient part of Shinto tradition...
 
Maybe I didn't pick up on it, but why did you think the dog with the waggly tail - sorry, I mean the bloke with the straggly hair had anything to do with the experience?

Incidentally, the least they could have given you was a teddy bear.
 
GNC said:
Maybe I didn't pick up on it, but why did you think the dog with the waggly tail - sorry, I mean the bloke with the straggly hair had anything to do with the experience?

Incidentally, the least they could have given you was a teddy bear.
Click to expand...

He clearly had nothing to do with it in the real world, just a Japanese man probably visiting someone in one of the two dozen or so apartments in my building.

In the late at night WTF analysis of matters though he is clearly some kind of messenger of the kami who came to deliver the missing piece of glass from the Kyoto shrine to my sofa for as yet unclear purposes.

Have to add to this that something else rather weird/unsettling happened to me this afternoon as well. Was in WHSmith here in Paris and a short slender, presumably French, woman crossed in front of my path as I was looking at a shelf of books. I sensed she was looking right at me as she went past and then I saw as she turned the corner she was still looking back at me very slowly as she walked out of the line of sight. She then came back and walked in front of me again really staring right in my face and with a weird kind of childlike smile on her face. I briefly made direct eye contact and thought she would say something, I presumed she was delighted by moustache, for it is quite delightful, but she never said anything just kept staring. A bit weirded out I kept looking at the books on the shelf before heading to pay at the desk. I didn't look back but had a strong feeling she was still watching me, and sure enough as I went to leave I looked back and she was there leaning against a shelf on the other side of the shop and just staring at me with an admiring smile on her face.

Again, probably just a weirdo and/or moustache fetishist, my gambolling mind couldn't quite help interpret her though as some kind of otherworldly entity who could see my now Shinto-God enhanced aura beaming out and filling the rue de Rivoli branch of WHSmith... :D

Will report any further peculiar occurrences!
 
McAvennie said:
Have to add to this that something else rather weird/unsettling happened to me this afternoon as well. Was in WHSmith here in Paris and a short slender, presumably French, woman crossed in front of my path as I was looking at a shelf of books. I sensed she was looking right at me as she went past and then I saw as she turned the corner she was still looking back at me very slowly as she walked out of the line of sight. She then came back and walked in front of me again really staring right in my face and with a weird kind of childlike smile on her face. I briefly made direct eye contact and thought she would say something, I presumed she was delighted by moustache, for it is quite delightful, but she never said anything just kept staring. A bit weirded out I kept looking at the books on the shelf before heading to pay at the desk. I didn't look back but had a strong feeling she was still watching me, and sure enough as I went to leave I looked back and she was there leaning against a shelf on the other side of the shop and just staring at me with an admiring smile on her face.

Again, probably just a weirdo and/or moustache fetishist, my gambolling mind couldn't quite help interpret her though as some kind of otherworldly entity who could see my now Shinto-God enhanced aura beaming out and filling the rue de Rivoli branch of WHSmith... :D

Will report any further peculiar occurrences!
Click to expand...
Was her behaviour weird, or did she just fancy you, I wonder?
 
McAvennie said:
He clearly had nothing to do with it in the real world, just a Japanese man probably visiting someone in one of the two dozen or so apartments in my building.

In the late at night WTF analysis of matters though he is clearly some kind of messenger of the kami who came to deliver the missing piece of glass from the Kyoto shrine to my sofa for as yet unclear purposes.
Click to expand...

Right, so in your state of heightened awareness, you wondered if he had planted the shard on you? Maybe the unlikely nature of your accuracy with the card has set off thought processes that see the world as a little more mysterious - or magical?
 
Were there any house sitters watching your place while your wife and you were in Japan? Maybe an unhappy romantic ending led to a framed photo being thrown at the wall or something. The one piece of glass that didn't get picked up was left unnoticed on the back of the sofa . . .

However, it is a weird thing to have a previously unnoticed piece of glass on the back of your sofa, when you move the sofa around frequently.

The two glass shards aren't actually the same shape though, just roughly similar which might be due to the nature of similar types of glass and how they may fracture into similar shapes.

Kudos on flipping your business card onto the plinth, and thanks for sharing an interesting piece of local Shinto culture!
 
Mythopoeika said:
Was her behaviour weird, or did she just fancy you, I wonder?
Click to expand...

It was very weird, but she was probably in her early 60s and not my type so I didn't investigate the latter...

IbisNibs said:
Were there any house sitters watching your place while your wife and you were in Japan? Maybe an unhappy romantic ending led to a framed photo being thrown at the wall or something. The one piece of glass that didn't get picked up was left unnoticed on the back of the sofa . . .

However, it is a weird thing to have a previously unnoticed piece of glass on the back of your sofa, when you move the sofa around frequently.

The two glass shards aren't actually the same shape though, just roughly similar which might be due to the nature of similar types of glass and how they may fracture into similar shapes.

Kudos on flipping your business card onto the plinth, and thanks for sharing an interesting piece of local Shinto culture!
Click to expand...

Nope, no housesitters. I am sure we must at some point have broken something and somehow that shard has been sat there unnoticed for months. It is just a curious and entertaining coincidence how I found it days after a memorable and slightly mystical incident involving a missing shard of glass.
 
@McAvennie - If you had to put your fingers through the broken pane at the shrine, can you remember roughly how thick the glass felt? Some glass sheets can be up to 5mm thickness while picture frame glass is usually 2mm.
 
David Plankton said:
@McAvennie - If you had to put your fingers through the broken pane at the shrine, can you remember roughly how thick the glass felt? Some glass sheets can be up to 5mm thickness while picture frame glass is usually 2mm.
Click to expand...
Good point! Picture glass is pretty thin.
 
McAvennie said:
Okay,

This is a "Literally just happened to me... ", so much so I am still having shivers and trying to figure it out.

So, I have been working in Japan for the past month and landed home yesterday. My wife came over near the end of my stay and we travelled briefly to a few cities around the country.

In Kyoto we hired a guide to take us around and we visited the Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine. This site is popular for people to visit to pray for success in business and one of the traditions there involves a white horse in a glass cabinet. The glass is broken in one corner and visitors try to throw their business card through the gap and onto the plinth the horse stands on. Our guide told us this story and when we looked in there were perhaps five cards on the plinth and hundreds strewn across the floor. Naturally, I decided to try my luck and with some calculated angling and a strong flick managed to land mine right on the plinth under the horse's carrot. Our guide was gobsmacked and visibly shook by seeing me do this, stating she had never seen anyone come near to doing this.

You can read a bit about horses in Shinto here, that references the shrine in Kyoto...
http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2016/06/horsing-around-at-shinto-shrines.html?m=1

So, I have told the story about my luck to a lot of colleagues since coming back. Advising them any future success of the company is thanks to me.

Cut to this evening. Arriving back at my apartment I go to open the building door when it flies open before I touch the handle, opened by a guy on the other side who happened to be Japanese, long straggly hair and staring, slightly wild eyes. Never seen him before in the building and it startled me somewhat, but nothing out of the ordinary in that.

A few hours later I am sat in the sofa and absent-mindedly put my hand on the back ledge only to feel that there was something solid sat there. Picked it up and it was a shard of glass. Now we have not broken anything glass and I cannot find any other shards or evidence of something being broken. We also move the sofa quite often so anything broken would not be able to sit there unnoticed for a long time.

It then struck me that the shard was the exact same shape as the missing piece from the glass cabinet in Kyoto. Looking at a picture confirmed more or less that it is the exact shape. It even has the same rain-smeared streaks on it as the glass at the shrine.

Chills went down my spine as I realised this and then remembered the unusual Japanese man at the entrance to my building.

Cannot think of anywhere a broken piece of glass would just appear from in my apartment. Coincidence I guess that it seems to fit the missing piece from Kyoto. Anyhow, I am feeling a little confused and a bit unsettled!
Click to expand...
That could be adapted into a decent thriller. You are persued across Europe - is the long haired man protecting you or persecuting you, only revealed in the twist at the end!

Could be you have already had the good luck and don't know it.
 
Taking another look at the shard found in the flat, I thought the damage at the top suggests the way some glass will flake in layers. Is there part of a drilled hole on the blade-like top? An over-tightened fixture can cause shearing like this. :thought:
 
I like it, let us know when the business takes off.
 
possibly something broke which your old lady dealt with while you were out there, whats she think of the shard ?
 
Really interesting story. It does feel a bit like the beginning of a murakami novel though, keep an eye out for that straggly-haired wild-eyed man.

Regarding the woman in the shop, I had a similar incident a couple of weeks ago where a fairly normal looking middle aged woman in a shopping centre started staring fixedly at me and muttering about Jesus with a kind of sneer on her face (I've got long hair and a beard), I concluded that she was nuts but it did freak me out a little.
 
James_H said:
Really interesting story. It does feel a bit like the beginning of a murakami novel though, keep an eye out for that straggly-haired wild-eyed man.

Regarding the woman in the shop, I had a similar incident a couple of weeks ago where a fairly normal looking middle aged woman in a shopping centre started staring fixedly at me and muttering about Jesus with a kind of sneer on her face (I've got long hair and a beard), I concluded that she was nuts but it did freak me out a little.
Click to expand...

Maybe you are The Messiah and not just a naughty boy.
 
David Plankton said:
@McAvennie - If you had to put your fingers through the broken pane at the shrine, can you remember roughly how thick the glass felt? Some glass sheets can be up to 5mm thickness while picture frame glass is usually 2mm.
Click to expand...

From what I recall it was reasonably thick glass.

maximus otter said:
My first thought was that the hole looked about the right size for a .177” air rifle pellet. Do you have neighbours with a pigeon problem?

maximus otter
Click to expand...

I think my neighbours would be more likely to be aiming at me than pigeons...

henry said:
possibly something broke which your old lady dealt with while you were out there, whats she think of the shard ?
Click to expand...

She is baffled and doesn't have any memory of breaking anything. Although the first time I left her alone in the flat my last words were 'Don't burn the place down... ' and I returned to discover that she had thrown a party that somehow ended in a candle and a facecloth interfacing and my semi-joking fears very nearly coming true.
 
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