It’s only a few minutes away and I drive past it five days a week when I go to school in the morning – an uninteresting looking mound of green grass tucked away behind some yakiniku restaurants and a Family Mart. I had no idea that this tiny hill had such significance!

Everyone knows about shisa. They’re everywhere. They’re on top of houses, in front of banks, on the roof or entrance of every library and hospital and school. The protectors of properties and chasers away of bad spirits are the icon of Okinawa. And heavily branded too! T-shirts, souvenirs, posters, on the sides of buses, anywhere you could possibly use the image of a shisa, it’s there.

So, I started looking one day for information about the legend of the shisa. And during my search, from click to click to click, I just happened to find out that the real legend of the shisa starts right there on that lump of earth I drive by every day.

It’s called Gaanamui — Gaana Woods — and it’s where it all began.

Here’s the story, summarised. Long long ago, at Shuri Castle (yes, the same red castle in the previous post), the King of the Ryukyu Kingdom received a visitor from China, who brought with him a necklace which had a tiny stone lion-dog creature on it. The emissary tells the king that it is a protective amulet, and the king wears it under his robes.

Meanwhile, in the village of Madanbashi (my backyard!!), there is a dragon busy terrorising the residents, destroying their homes, and killing all in its way. The high priestess of the area has a vision that the King will use an amulet to scare away the dragon. She sends a young boy named Chiga to relay the message to the King.

The King goes to Madanbashi to see for himself the damage, and face the dragon. The dragon appears, and fearing for his life, the King pulls out the tiny shisa from around his neck, and holds it up to the dragon.

According to some versions of the story, the shisa amulet emits a fearsome roar that shakes the earth. A giant boulder flies up into the sky, and falls onto the dragon’s back. The dragon lays there, and slowly starves to death. And the dragon’s body is apparently what is under the Gaana Mui mound that sits there, so unassuming, on the side of the road today, next to the convenience store.

The villagers build a stone statue of the shisa to honour it, and the village was never terrorised again. That is why to this day, people use stone shisa for protection.

If you want to visit Gaana Mui, be aware that in the summer time the hill is FULL of very aggressive kamimaze cicadas who literally dive bomb you as you walk on the tiny path and scream in your ear. Seriously! So maybe summer time is not the best time to go, when cicadas are everywhere.

Here’s the map: