Shrines and temples are serious places where people go to pray for something or another. The majority of them are fairly normal but then there are the slightly quirky ones like this one in Shinagawa ward.

In the recent whale shrine post I mentioned that a student had initially given me the wrong details for the characters shrine but he corrected that and so I tried again to locate it one Saturday. I actually went here during the middle of my 75 hour water fasting challenge after much indecision about whether it was a good idea to do a 30 minute walk or not. I needed something to take my mind off that though so strolled on up to see this shrine.

Needless to say that this shrine is part of the ‘One Hundred Scenic Spots in Shinagawa’ collection which doesn’t really say much as just about anything and everything seems to be included!! Admittedly, I was expecting a tiny little shrine so I was quite surprised to discover that Irugi Shrine was way bigger than I imagined and it actually has three entrance points.

It’s pretty much a regular shrine other than that it possesses small statues of characters like Micky Mouse, Doraemon, Pikachu and some other animals. The truth is that there isn’t really a reason why they have such statues. The shrine has links with a company who make it’s gravestones and the remaining concrete is used up making these fun little statues which are placed randomly around the shrine.

Regular Tokyo Fox readers may be mistaken for thinking that the final pictures below are from the ‘On The Fox Trail…’ series of posts. As desperate as I am to prolong that series, I don’t think this shrine really qualifies. It does have a couple of foxes though but sadly they are in cages which is never nice to see! I don’t know if there’s any meaning to it but it seems pointless for stone foxes to be behind wire!

Irugi Shrine is located at 3-8-20 Ōsaki, Shinagawa-ku. It is six minutes walk from Osaki Station or 11 minutes on foot from Gotanda Station.

Click here to read ‘Have A Whale Of A Time At This Tokyo Shrine!’

Click here to read ‘Elephant Temple In Tokyo!’ 

Click here to read ‘TF Top 10……Alternative Temples And Shrines In Tokyo’

Click here to read ‘Three Of A Kind: Dragon Torii Gates In Tokyo’