four weddings and expressing gratitude

So glad that we made the decision to take the later Shinkansen to Kyoto on our last day, in Tokyo (Sunday), and followed our plans to visit the beautiful Meiji jingū (明治 神宮) shrine, first of all we had a wonderful sunny day, one of the few and we also strike lucky with the weddings, one after the other. Meiji jingū is a Shinto shrine.

Shinto has no founder, no holy book, and not even the concept of religious conversion, but Shinto values for example harmony with nature.

The Japaneses people are very flexible in their worship and religions, they use them all …. what ever they feel for there and then. Just as it should be.

Madhu@The Urge To Wander gave me the tip about the temple and the park … and about that is’t a very popular place for weddings. So popular that it became a bit too much for me in the end … every 20 min there was a new wedding procession, but no doubt about it – those weddings is truly eye-candy. There was always some christenings.

The park itself is an area of 700,000 m2 and it was founded in November, 1920 – it’s a park created by the people. When Emperor Meiji passed away in 1912 and Empress Shoken in 1914. After their passing, people wished to commemorate their virtues and to venerate them forever. So they donated 100,000 trees from all over Japan and from overseas, and they worked voluntarily to create this forest, today a National Park.

A Shinto wedding cost around  Y2,000,000/$17.000 – only the wedding kimono can cost Y400.000/$3.350. It seams that is quite popular for American couples to get married in Japan, but it’s a fair amount of work involved. What I understand is it a Japanese custom that the wedding guests gives contributions to the wedding, so some weddings can even make a profit. I think that is a fantastic custom.

The red umbrella is very symbolic of Japanese weddings. The color red in Japan means life and wards off evils and the umbrella itself keeps the bride dry if it happens to be raining or protects her from strong sun.

Before leaving the shrine I did my Kiganbun, a Kiganbun is a letter to the deities. It may contain wishes or words of gratitude, and it may be written in any language. Most of you know  that I’m not a believer as such – but at the Meiji jingū it felt right for me to express my thankfulness, even if my spellings is what it’s.

“Blasa ” (Lovley) preformed by YAE –  is one popular Japanese popular wedding songs today – was lucky to find it on Soundcloud, but I don’t know if it’s YAE that sings on this track.

“Oh I don’t mind going to weddings,
just as long as it’s not my own…”
Tom Waits