Shrines and temples神社とお寺
Arrive early and walk the approach on foot. Here is which is which, what to do at each, and where to go.
Arrive early and walk the approach on foot. Here is which is which, what to do at each, and where to go.
Japan has both, they often stand next to each other, and telling them apart takes about ten seconds once you know what to look for. Nobody minds if you get it wrong.
Rinse your hands at the water basin as you go in — one ladle does both hands. Keep your voice down: people are praying. Photographs are usually fine in the grounds and often not inside a hall — look for 撮影禁止. A bad fortune is tied to the rack and left there; that is what the rack is for. And : the famous ones are transformed at 07:00.
Every one of these links to the prefecture it is in, so you can build a trip around it.
Thousands of vermilion gates up a mountainside. Open all night, free, and empty before 07:00.
The most important shrine in Japan. Plain cypress in a forest, rebuilt every twenty years.
Where the gods of Japan are said to gather each year. Enormous straw ropes, and four claps.
A shrine and a great gate standing in the sea.
A fifteen-metre bronze Buddha from the eighth century, in a colossal wooden hall.
The oldest temple in Tokyo, through a street of small shops. Go before 08:00.
The most heavily decorated buildings in Japan — five thousand carvings and gold leaf.
A Buddhist town at 800 metres where about fifty temples take guests overnight.
123 red gates running down a headland to a cliff above the sea.
A temple on a wooden platform over a hillside, with the whole city below it.