Shirahama Beach Park and Kashima-jinja Shrine 白浜海水浴場と鹿島神社

Official explanation

In addition to the white sand beach, Shirahama Beach has a park with picnic and barbecue areas and hosts a wide variety of seasonal outdoor activities for visitors, including dragnet fishing from March through September.

Nearby Kashima-jinja Shrine is reputedly home to a somewhat picky deity. According to legend, local residents would traditionally make ritual offerings of unfiltered sake (doburoku) to the deity. One year, however, the rice yield was so poor that they had to offer alcohol made from wheat instead. The following year, the rice crop was bountiful. The community expressed its gratitude with a traditional offering of sake, only to suffer a sudden outbreak of illness and injury. Putting their heads together, they came to the conclusion that the deity of this shrine preferred wheat-based offerings to rice-based sake. This preference earned Kashima the nickname the Beer Shrine, and to this day, worshippers still bring offerings of beer.

Read the full explanation

Kashima-jinja Shrine was washed away by the 2011 tsunami, but the foundation of the original structure is still visible, and many of the monuments lost in the disaster have since been recovered.

出典: 地域観光資源の多言語解説文データベース（観光庁） — www.mlit.go.jp/tagengo-db. この英語解説文は観光庁の地域観光資源の多言語解説整備支援事業で作成しました。
Source: Japan Tourism Agency, Multilingual Explanation Database. This English text was produced by the Japan Tourism Agency's multilingual explanation project and is shown unedited. Opening hours and services may have changed since it was written.