S P O T ／ SPOT-342

Jumbo Zodiac at Tatsumizu Shrine

ジャンボ干支（辰水神社）じゃんぼえと（たつみずじんじゃ）

Every winter since 1986, the small Tatsumizu Shrine in the hills of Misato, Tsu City, sprouts a giant—the "Jumbo Zodiac." A local volunteer group, the Furusato Aikōkai, builds that year's zodiac animal at far-larger-than-life-size from a steel frame sheathed in carved, painted Styrofoam, and dedicates it on the shrine's approach as a "good-fortune passage gate" you walk beneath to pray for the new year. Each figure stands roughly three meters tall and wide, and—crucially—it is rebuilt from scratch every year, so the creature changes completely: a dragon that puffs white gas from its mouth one year, a 3.2-meter white serpent clutching a gold coin the next, a rearing white-and-gold horse for 2026. On display only from around December 29 to mid-February, this handmade colossus appearing in a snowbound mountain shrine is a beloved winter tradition of central Mie—and, with its aging makers, one whose survival is now uncertain.