Hanging Lanterns at 春日大社

    春日大社 is a beautiful Shinto shrine in Nara that we visited on Friday. Even though it was cloudy that day, it was still pretty warm. We saw the thousands of stone lanterns and so many deer, and one of them ate Marshall's map 😔 Another deer bit me on the leg while I was holding a rice cracker. But they were still cute.

    Inside the shrine, I noticed the intricate designs on the hanging lanterns. One of my favorites had a doe and fawn. Many had kanji, but nothing looked familiar until I saw the lantern in the picture below. I recognized 二十八 but did not know what it meant in this context. Some of the other girls and I looked up the first two characters and realized that 平成 means the Heisei period. We know from class that this era lasted from 1989 to 2019. With this information, we concluded that the lantern was probably created or donated in 2016. The remaining kanji are probably the donor's information.

    I'm not sure why, but I assumed the hanging lanterns would be older. I guess I forgot that even though the shrine itself is very old, it has been rebuilt and renovated several times. We saw one tree in the shrine that is believed to be one thousand years old, but everything in the shrine is not that insanely old. I'm also guessing that maintaining the shrine is possible because of donors, so their names are placed around the shrine in gratitude. We have been talking about the sacred and profane in class, and this might be an example of how they can merge.

    I'm really happy we were able to visit 春日大社! I knew hardly anything about it before going, but now I won't forget it.

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