Day 271, Tokyo, Japan
Meiji Shrine is located in Yoyogi Park, in honor of the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken. At the entrance of the park are these majestic wooden toris. After you pass through the tori you walk through a quiet forest with many tall trees.
You can enter the shrine through three different gates.
We had no idea it would be wedding central. We saw that there was a group of people, many of whom were dressed in black. We thought we had come across a funeral of some type. But then we saw a traditionally dressed couple under a red umbrella and realized the serious occasion was actually a wedding. Once the couple was inside, another wedding party came out. Then through a different gate came yet another wedding party. There was a person carefully directing wedding traffic so the parties wouldn’t run into each other.
I don’t know if the drums were coordinated with the wedding ceremonies in any way, but they would boom periodically. They were huge drums, three times the size of our bathroom.
Not only were there weddings taking place, but also baby ceremonies of some kind. There were babies in large kimono-like blankets. This was the area where you could write a request on a wood and place it on the structure.
We ducked into a teeny tiny ramen shop for lunch.
From the shrine we walked over to the busiest train station in Tokyo.
Daily over 3.5 million people pass through this station. But what was more interesting to me was the Hello Kitty road construction barriers outside of the busiest station in Tokyo.
