Fairly soon after I arrived in Akita I had the chance to visit a local shrine near Akita International University. I went with some of my friends from the school, and the opportunity helped me get closer to many of them. One of the people who I went with, and whose since become my best friend here, is Kata Stecina. Although originally from Hungary, she’s spending the fall semester here as well.
The Shrine was cool to see, especially as the first one I visited in Japan. Most of the shrines I’ve been to since have had people working there; this one however was empty except for the small group of people I was with. It was interesting to see the level of respect displayed for the temple by people who didn’t follow the local religion, were unsupervised, and to an extent were unaware of the proper way of acting around shrines.
