This year for my ‘first shine visit of the year’ I popped round to my local shrine, Shimogamo Jinja, just at the stroke of midnight to capture the atmosphere as the calendrical cycle started anew. I was expecting few people, but in fact there were a lot, mostly young I must say. At certain points social distancing was definitely not being practised. Will we see a spike in Covid cases in a week or two? Hopefully not… Kyoto has been relatively safe so far. Anyway you can be sure such concerns are in the prayers of the many worshippers lining up to ring the bell and alert the kami at the start of this promising new year. A plague on the pestilence! Demons out, Year of the Ox in!
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For more about New Year in Japan, please see the righthand column New Year and click on the postings that come up.
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