Meiji Jingu is a shrine dedicated to the emperor who opened Japan to the world and his empress, completed in 1920 and surrounded by a 70-hectare forest of 100,000 trees donated from across the country and planted by volunteers to look, a century later, as if it had always been there. The approach passes under a 12-meter cypress torii, past a wall of sake barrels offered by brewers and a wall of Burgundy barrels offered by French vintners, to a courtyard of copper-roofed halls in unpainted wood.
Three million people come at New Year, but on a weekday morning it is almost empty. Bow at the torii, rinse your hands at the font, toss a coin and bow twice, clap twice, bow once. Then exit by the Yoyogi side into the park, or back to Harajuku for the opposite of silence.
- Arrive at opening to walk the gravel path in near silence; it takes ten minutes from the Harajuku torii to the main hall
- On weekend mornings you will often see a Shinto wedding procession crossing the courtyard
- The Inner Garden, 500 yen, has Kiyomasa's well and an iris field that peaks in mid-June