Kirk here. Today is March 3rd, Reiwa 3. 3-3-3. That has made shrines (jinja) p…

Kirk here. Today is March 3rd, Reiwa 3. 3-3-3. That has made shrines (jinja) popular today. Let me explain.

Until COVID-19 made it virtually impossible for students to come to Kumamoto Gakuen University (my work place) as exchange students, I had a bilingual seminar that was made up of Japanese students and students from other countries. One of the things I had them do was to give little presentations about their hobbies, interests, or the culture of their home countries. Through one such presentation, a Japanese student opened my eyes to the practice of collecting goshuin (see English article below).

Had it not been for that student, I probably would have had a harder time understanding the RKK TV news story linked to below. It seems that lots of people wanted an auspicious goshuin with three 3s today.

Here’s the RKK video report: https://rkk.jp/news/index.php?id=NS003202103031835460111

And here’s an English article about goshuin (my screenshot is of this): https://livejapan.com/en/in-tokyo/in-pref-tokyo/in-tokyo_train_station/article-a0002402/

P.S. Sorry for not being smart enough to give you a heads up about this beforehand. I just realized that today is 3-3-3 myself.