Students attend before their high school entrance exams. Families bring their cars to be protected from accidents through elaborate rituals used in earlier ages to bless horses. Company presidents bring their employees to ask for the assistance of the gods. The community turns to the shrines, too, for the major festivals. During the local festivals, the Shinto believers are united in the same purpose.
Festivals honor the seasons, ask blessings for crops or ask for prosperity in the town.
Shamanism is still a feature of Shinto practices in Aomori Prefecture, where the elderly priestess-mediums called itako deliver messages from the spirit world. Shinto and Buddhism today are inextricable, and in the spirit of Japanese eclecticism, continue to borrow from new ideas. This continual borrowing is the mechanism that helps Shinto grow and remain vital. In an interview with a Kyoto newspaper, Konin Shigaraki, head priestess of Kurama Temple talks about the meaning of Japanese spirituality in the modern era. It is important to note that the Kurama Temple, an independent Buddhist temple, has no sectarian affiliations.