This shrine is called “Funadama Shrine.” It houses a relic shaped like a boat.

Speaking of boats, the rias coastline is a naturally occurring breakwater, making for a good harbor. As a result, it was frequented by ships from Tohoku and Kyushu, and sometimes even from the mainland and North Korea.

Foreign vessels from Indonesia first landed here during the Muromachi Period. Those ships transported very peculiar animals: parrots, peacocks, and also elephants. How shocked the Obama locals must have been back then, seeing such animals for the first time. Maybe they ran and hid at the sight, or perhaps they looked on curiously. At any rate, the elephants were transported to Kyoto a month after arriving in Obama. Did they stomp majestically along the main route, or were they transported secretly via some quiet road? We’ll keep how it happened back then a secret, but foreign and inscrutable things were carried along that road.

The relic inside the Funadama shrine is a figure of an Edo-period cargo ship. But that great harbor has connected Obama to the world since far older days.