Principally, the image of a religion held by many Japanese is of an organisation which one joins, and which stipulates various ways in which one should behave according to some kind of teaching or scripture. If Shinto had an organisation once it lacks one now. Shinto has always lacked a scripture, other than the myths which explain the origin of Japan but are not proscriptive in any way. Other than myths and legends of this sort Shinto has hardly any oral tradition. Lacking an organisation and any linguistic formulation of how one should behave, Shinto is particularly transparent.
Prayer is matter of movement - before god one bows twice, claps ones hands twice and bows again.
While Shinto is very different from the Judaic religions and even Indian Buddhism, it does in my view contain sufficient points of commonality to allow it to be compared these and to be called a religion. In Shinto there is prayer to and worship of something transcendent, not part of the mundane physical world. The Structure of Shinto Shinto has two faces. One is that of national religion where all shrines are ranked according to a system that places the shrine of the Emperor of Japan and his ancestors at the pinnacle. The other face, upon which I will concentrate here, is a form of nature worship in which objects, mountains, trees, rocks and lakes etc., are considered to be the manifestation of the Gods.