Praying at the Meiji Shrine for a good New Year

Today we visited the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo - a part of the New Year tradition in Japan

The entry gate near Harajuku station

We were there with several hundred thousand other people

The gate into the shrine.

The police controlled the crowd really well.  We were stopped by a very polite policeman holding a sign that said "Please wait for a short time".

And when it was our turn, the police walked us slowly through.  We found it amazing that there would be hundreds of thousands of people all orderly walking through to the shrine.

There was a loooooong line behind us and in front of us...... every person quietly walking (and a lot of people taking photos).

We made it to the front, threw our coins, clapped twice and made our prayers.  I prayed for all my sisters & my brother, and all my kids - hoping that 2014 is a better year than 2013.

 

Here people write their hopes for 2014 onto wooden tablets as prayers

We paid 100yen for a poem from the emperor, and then tied it to the fence

One of the great things that we saw, was that the Red Cross has set up a blood donation drive at the entrance to the temple - a great PR exercise at the very least with 3 million people walking past over 3 days, and a great way to boost blood donations (every person that donates gets a plushy horse toy as a gift - as it is the beginning of the year of the horse, 2014).

These people were protesting at the entrance to the Meiji Shrine - against the 3 million people going to pray for the New Year (there was a lady standing next to them protesting about animal experimentation).  These people were Christians who thought that protesting whilst people prayed was a good way to tell them about the love of Christ.  This made me so angry - there are so many very positive ways they could have done this - handing out water, helping with the Red Cross blood drive, looking after disabled people (J was on crutches and struggling by this stage and they totally ignored her), yet they chose the worst way to show the love of God, by protesting against people as they prayed.  This is exact opposite of showing the love of God, and is such bad advertising for Christians - hence why it made me very cranky.