We're in the restaurant. The menu is entirely in Japanese, so Teri took it outside and matched the characters by the food we wanted to the menu.
Allyn had some sort of rice bowl with tuna. Miso soup and Japanese pickles on the side.
Teri wasn't so lucky. She made a mistake on the character matching and ended up with a rice dish covered in half-cooked egg, which she was unhappy about.
We took the subway over to the Meiji Jingu Shrine. This is a Shinto shrine. The two major religions in Japan are Shinto and Buddhist. This is the torii (gate) outside indicating a sacred Shinto structure. Constructed of Japanese cypress, this is one of the largest wooden torii in Japan, at 12m high and 9m post-to-post. That's Teri standing under the arch.
This is the main courtyard of the shrine.
One of the rituals performed at a shrine or temple is cleansing. This consists of using a small cup on a stick to pour water over the hands, then taking some from the right hand to the mouth and spitting it out. The cleaning "stations" are sometimes quite elaborate. This is the one at Meiji Jingu.
Another shrine ritual are these votive tablets called ema. Prayers and wishes are written on the back and these are hung on sticks. We wrote out several ema. Wish us luck!
The shrine courtyard is a very picturesque area and they have bleachers set up for photography. This appears to be a wedding party.
And this appears to be another wedding party. Note the fancy black kimonos on the women at either end. We think these are "formal" kimonos.