On Wednesday, August 16, I went to “Mystery Koshikiiwa,” a haunted courage test event at Koshikiiwa Shrine!
Koshikiiwa Shrine. It was still this bright just before 6 p.m., but it already had this kind of atmosphere.
Next to the main shrine building. I’d heard the entrance to the haunted course was on the shrine office side, but…
It looked like the direction the kids were heading.
There were tons of parents and children gathered there.
Here’s what it looked like inside. The entrance seemed to be at the top of the stairs.
This haunted courage test was a pretty serious one, based on a Nishinomiya folk tale about the curse of a tanuki that was made into tanuki soup.
The quest for this haunted course seemed to be getting a tanuki charm.
And the person guiding us was, believe it or not, perhaps transformed by a tanuki herself: Azusa Yokoyama, familiar from “AzuAzu’s Friday Toy Box” on Sakura FM!!!
Inside, there were lots of scary setups performed by the children, and you had to search for the charm. It was a mystery-solving type of attraction, but it was actually quite elaborate.
There was a gross eyeball and things like that suddenly appearing, so it really startled me.
Some of the effects were seriously scary.
Holding the charm, we made our way through the shrine with guidance from the tanuki.
We went along this path, but the way we were guided really made it feel like we were being tricked by tanuki. It felt like being inside a game.
With the offering money attached to the charm, we were guided to…
We paid our respects and made an offering at Osaki Inari.
On the final path back, the little tanuki children splashed us with water!
Finally
When we safely returned to the entrance, we received an amulet as a gift. It was a haunted courage test put on by elementary school children, but perhaps because it was held at Koshikiiwa Shrine, a place with deep ties to the story, it felt much more authentic than expected and gave us a nice chilling experience. We got wet at the end too. I’m already looking forward to next year. I want to go again!!
