field trip!

D's class of 5- and 6-year-olds visited the Meiji Shrine last week. I was one of the chaperones, and these were my charges:

It was a beautiful day, and the kids didn't complain (much) as they trekked from school in Shibuya through Harajuku and into Yoyogi Park. They gathered outside the torii (gate), which marks the entrance to the shrine grounds and helps keep bad spirits out, good spirits in.


Class picture! Mrs. Richards is on the right, and that's Miss Higashidate, assistant teacher, in the orange jacket. After the photo op, D breaks from the pack...
A shot of the gate from the other side. I read somewhere that it's made of 1,700-year-old cypress trees from Taiwan.

Farther down the gravelly path is a smaller gate leading into a courtyard and some buildings and other areas surrounding the shrine. We stopped so Mrs. Richards could brief the kids about being quiet and respectful.
She also told them not to step on the roots of this tree, because it was so old.
We split into our smaller groups as we closed in, walking through a large wooden doorway to another area and getting as close as they allow the public to get. On Sundays, weddings are performed here, and you can come see the brides in traditional dress.
The other visitors were speaking in hushed tones or not at all, and the kids were pretty good about helping to keep the peace, even when one of the Shinto priests started banging this enormous drum. I figured it was a sort of shout-out to the good spirits. Then someone told me that they do it to signal to the crowd that a VIP, some higher-ranking priest, was present and praying inside the shrine proper.

After pounding for a while, the priest turned and walked away without a word. This is one serious dude in patent-leather clogs.

The kids were invited to offer up a prayer of their own. The proper way, we were told, was to put your hands together with your left fingertips slightly higher than the right, say your prayer silently to yourself, and give a little bow before slipping a 5-yen coin into the till.

Then it was time to write a wish on a piece of paper and slip it into the prayer box, along with another 5-yen coin. D wrote that he hoped his family "would get better." We're not sick so maybe he thinks we're all nuts? I didn't ask. Maybe it was his own shorthand for what Mrs. Richards had suggested that the kids wish for: good health and happiness for their loved ones.