【鎌倉】Turuoka Hachimanguu Shrine

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 (=.=)!!!!