Ise Shrine - Rice Ceremony

Ise Shrine is one of the three most important shrines in Japan and is in the prefecture of Mie, about 1 or 2 hours from Nagoya city. A few months ago I visited and walked up on a couple of Shinto Priest praying next to a river but did not pay much attention to this.

After walking around he shrine for a little while, I ended up in one of the situations that I was not really sure what was going on. But with everyone else, just lined up along the side of the main road to see what would happen next.   Not much time later a Shinto priest parade started.

Hey, what's in that box?

Not sure what was in the box, but it could have not been to heavy if two priest were able to carry it.  I think this event was a rice ceremony, but again, this is just a good guess.

The priest took the box up to the shine at the top of the stair case, everyone waited for permission to go up their.

After a few minutes of waiting, the security guards let everyone walk up and see the box up close.

But at the top of the hill, no photos and the box was closed... I kind of think it was empty.