As a nice welcome sign on my way to Meiji Shrine from Harajuku station, I got to see a big Torii on the entrance to Yoyogi Park. Torii is a traditional Japanese gate at the entrance to a shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the profane to the sacred. The presence of a torii at the entrance is an easy way to identify shrines. However, they are a common also for a Japanese Buddhist temples, but then they stand at the entrance of the temple's own shrine, called chinjusha and usually are way smaller.
As a second... I got to see big barrels of sake or nihonshu. For those which still do not know, sake is a rice-based Japanese alcohol. Those who refer it to rice-wine are very wrong because, unlike true wine, sake is made through a brewing process more like a beer. But the brewing process for sake differs from beer brewing as well. What simply means that sake is sake, and that is all!!!
This traditional Japanese alcohol, produced by the multiple parallel fermentation of rice, in the past was brewing by temples and shrines, and they were the main centers of its production, like wine in monasteries in Europe.
Before the shrine I got to see the prayers left by visitors from around the word! The Meiji Shrine itself was very nice, however of course I was not allowed to take pictures, so you have to see it by yourself :P
After the Shrine I went for a small walk to the north of the Park where I got to see a great view of Shinjuku skyscrapers. I felt a bit like in NYC with a view of tall buildings around the Central Park ;) but here with an amazing cultural soul surrounding me...
Weather is getting better, so I hope to have more possibilities to visit this amazing city!
