Having risen early on a Thursday to start our journey, we approached Honshu island and Tokyo’s Narita airport directly into a fiery Friday sunset, advancing fourteen hours into the future.
The following day, we made our way to the Meiji-jingu Shrine in Tokyo for the Shichi-Go-San (7-5-3) festival. It’s held on the weekend closest to November 15 for parents to take their children to a Shinto shrine, offering thanks for their healthy growth. Picture taking was the order of the day. It looked to us as if total strangers were asking to have their pictures taken with the children being towed into the shrine. We loved the Crocs on the little girl, just above.
The Torii marks the boundary between the ordinary world and the sacred. The ones at this shrine were truly massive, as befits the dedication to Emperor Meiji (who is buried here along with Empress Shoken). The Shrine was built in 1920, just a few years after their deaths.
People wash their hands and rinse out their mouths before proceeding to the shrine for prayer.
Prayers can be offered with the help of ema or votive tablets.
Sake breweries offer barrels of sake every year in honor of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken and their divine souls. Through the Meiji Restoration of imperial rule to Japan, the foundation for international trade and commerce was laid. It was a rapid transition from feudal to modern.
Weddings at the shrine are very popular. There is another procession every time you turn around. When a young man we were chatting with at the counter of a little rice bowl restaurant near our hotel learned of our visit to the Meiji-jingo Shrine, he told us about his parents’ wedding there 30 some years ago.