After the Shopping Town
The end of the road leads to
a big shrine
Turuoka Hachimanguu Shrine
鶴岡八幡宮
Every shrine in Japan
will have this Big Red Gate
If there is no sign of this gate
that might probably a temple
The bridge that leads to the temple
This is the road for the gods to pass through
It is a sacred place so
people are not allowed to go through it
You can see the bridge leads straight to the temple
There is a small lake with lots of Lotus
Before you enter the Shrine territory
you need to wash your hands and mouth
before go in
you need to be clean before pray
★★Japanese culture★★
There is rules to do it though
First use right hand to get the scoop and fill in with water
Then pour water on your let hand and wash
then change to left hand and pour water to right hand and wash
then change back to right hand and pour water on your left hand
and use the water to wash your mouth
But DO NOT drink it!!!!!
Lastly If you have extra water
then just throw it away
After you are cleaned
Then lets start our tour at the shrine
On the right hand side
This place is for you to pray and take away the bad luck
and you can get your charm and fortune stick here
Here is the box for you to put in your fortune paper
if you get a bad paper
Before going up to the shrine
Remember to get a group photo (^^,)
a outdoor event with the labmates
cheese!!!!
Every shrine in japan
will be guarded by a statue
here the Guardian is a dog
Here you need to climb up the long stairs
Jonas starting to act as the Panda in the Disney movie of
"Kungfu Panda"
this is the scenery you can see when you reach the top
You can see the Ema 絵馬
which is a board where you write your wishes
and hand in front of the shrine
and pray for it to come true
Different shrine has different shapes and design of Ema
In this shrine
The shape is a leaf
We found a very cute wish
This person (most probably a girl)
wish for all cats in the world would be happy
So kind wish (^^,)
There is a small shrine with fox guardian up there
usually the shrine with fox guardian
will have multiple gates
and Fox guardian shrine
usually protect for the harvest
and for business people
This is tons of Japanese alcohol
which was a gift to the god and the shrine
is being lined up on a big shelf
There are also another small bridge around the lake
that lead to another small shrine
When you see this sign
it means be careful with the tortoise
you can see there is a lot of tortoise
in the lake
of course it is not so smelly as you can imagine
other than tortoise
there are lots of pigeons
The end!!!!!
Sorry for a long post (=.=)!!!!