Once a year every city in Japan holds a festival to pray to the local gods. Portable shrines, a shown in this picture, are used to help funnel these prayers to the spirit world. In Japanese this shrine is called a
mikoshi, and is held on one's
koshi, so it is literally a shoulder shrine. However, the Japanese kanji are different and so Japanese would argue this point. In the reality of modern life it is just an excuse to bring the community together. Very few Japanese people actually believe in gods in the way Christians believe in Jesus. The Japanese gods are more akin to the natural spirits of chaos, fortune and luck than to the creaters of the universe. Those creationist gods are very different, and would definitely not be hanging around my city's shrines.
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