MORE THAN SHOPPING

OK, just to prove I didn't just go shopping, here are a few photos that I took visiting a couple of Shinto shrines, the Meiji Shrine and the Senso-ji Temple. The Meiji shrine is situated behind the shopping area you all went to yesterday in Harajuku. It was a total oasis of calm and quietness after the hecticness (?) of shopping. So very peaceful and still inside. You enter though a torii (gate). This is at the Meiji shrine, and is the biggest in Japan (11m high) and made from 1600 year old cypress.



Once inside a shrine, it is ritual to wash your hands and then to rinse out your mouth before entering the inner grounds. There are little wooden ladels that you use. It took me several hours of scrubbing before I felt I had washed away all my sins.......



The inside of a shrine is more plain simple and less colourful than a temple.



I thought the pictures would look better in black and white as there were many lines and lots of contrast.......



There was a little wishing tree inside the compound. You buy a little wooden plaque and write a wish on it, then hang it on the sacred tree which gets blessed by the monks. I can't tell you my wish, but if it comes true (which it will), you will all feel its warmth.....



The Senso-ji Temple was quite different. It was much more popular as you can see.



The people huddled around the smoking pot are also participating in a cleansing ritual. You waft the smoke over your head to clear the spirit. Here is Yasu washing his spirit.



Unfortunately I didn't have much luck. I choked a little on the smoke. It was being wafted about willy-nilly, but it did look effective against the buildings........



Inside the main temple there is an altar. I didn't understand what to do, but people were bowing and clapping. I would have felt a little silly so I just watched and bowed my head. Others took photos but I felt it was disrespectful. My respectfulness wasn't however rewarded by the Shinto Gods. Next to the altar there's a row of little drawers and a mini tombola-like vessel. You put a coin in a box, then shake the tombola-thing a bit and then a chopstick pops out, with a symbol on it. You match it to one on the drawers, and open it. Inside there is a sheet of paper with a fortune on it. So I gaily picked out mine, feeling all lucky and special, but it was 'bad fortune'. One can cancel this out by rolling the paper up and tying it to an adjacent grill (symbolically leaving it behind). I rolled mine up too tightly it ripped in half, and consequently I couldn't tie it on. So I left, and the first statue I saw was this.....



Eek! But then I found this, which didn't seem quite so fierce (look at the little babies at its feet with knitted red hats on).....



The hat had fallen off the little baby in its hand. I wanted to put it back on, but after all my bad luck, I didn't want to push it.....



To top it off I chanced upon these....



And finally this.



I thought it was a shrine for chefs to come and worship the great God of cooking, but I was informed that the clothes are put on to keep them warm, and that in winter they wear scarves and wooly hats. After a stifled giggle, I forgot all about my bad fortune and wandered off with a smile.

Have a lucky day!