Shrines

There are shrines like this all over the neighborhood in our town. Some shrines are bigger and some smaller, but there is at least one shrine every other block in our area.

The bigger shrines could take up a whole block and they have festivals there many times a year; the smaller shrines are used to give offerings to the spirits. Offerings could be things like glasses of water, or a bottle of soda, a bowl of rice that are left on the little steps in front of the alter.

I asked my wife about all of these shrines and she told me that they offer protection for the residents of the town. Most shrines are dedicated to the protection of the children in the area.

It may seem strange to westerners, but we do the same in the United States, if you think about it. Along the highways or roads where children or teenagers have been killed in accidents, the people of the town place pictures, flowers and burn candles at the scene of a horrific tragedy in the hopes that it won't happen again.

The only difference is that the shrines in the west are reactive, we make them in response to a tragic event whereas the Japanese shrines are proactive, they make them to prevent tragic events from happening.

At first the shrines all over Japan seems superstitious and strange, but if you think about it; this little difference may not really be a difference at all.