Japanese Shinto shrines

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. I've never actually been inside a shrine

only on the "porch," as when I was staying with a family on New Year's and tagged along to their midnight trip to the local shrine.

The Shimbashi one seems to have an unusually large interior.

To add to what Art said, traditionally, Japanese weddings were conducted by Shinto priests and funerals by Buddhist priests.

The most important shrine in Japan is the Great Shrine of Ise, south of Nagoya, which is the shrine of the imperial family. There are actually two sites right next to each other, and every 20 years, they knock down the building on one site and start using the building on the other site, so that even though the idea of having a shrine at Ise dates back over a thousand years, the actual buildings are never more than 20 years old.