This week I crossed something off my bucket list.

I went to Kyoto via bullet train and saw the sights. Of course, they were as beautiful as you'd expect. A unique marriage of city and countryside, sprawling rivers, massive shrines and temples in the mountains, couples walking around in kimono and the like. It was that exotic "Japan" that most people who romanticize the past imagine when they think of the country. Up on the mountains at Kyomizu Temple, I could still see the sprawling city landscape beyond the trees.

The thing that got me the most curious was the blurry line between religion, tradition, consumerism and tourism. It wasn't really a line. It was more like a scribble between the categories, and everyone was darting from place to place. There were a lot of tourists in Kyoto, but there were also a lot of Japanese people who'd come to the shrines with serious intent. Whether that intent was religious or traditional or just to buy cute charms, it was there. Tourists crossed into those boundaries, too. I saw people who were clearly foreign on their knees at altars, praying for things.

I think of religion as something that others hold very sacred. It's meant to be respected, even when questioned. For much of my life I was not that way. I use to belittle religion for it's typical doctrine: believe in this thing you can't see and follow these rules or else you'll be punished. I've changed and Shinto in particular isn't like that. For some people in the world, religion is less about a fear of death and more about a positive relationship with their faith.

So it follows that religious sites would be sacred, right? Don't tread where you aren't wanted?

Well, not so much. I effectively screwed up the prayer and purification process at every shrine and temple I visited, but no one batted an eyelash. I took pictures of shrines and people praying. I stared at a private funeral where others might have bowed or walked away. I was too curious. I wanted to learn everything and try everything I could, but no one faulted me for it. I was beginning to think that there wasn't much religion going on at all.

My thought wasn't incorrect. Japan has a huge population of atheists. Even those who subscribe to Shinto traditions don't really believe in kami as gods with power. In Japan, most people who have a baby pray for a safe birth, so that's the way it's done, even if at the end of the day that person has no faith.

On the other hand, a few treat their religion with enough seriousness to stand outside shrines on select days and pray non-stop to appease the kami. I saw a nun standing nearby Fushimi Inari Shrine, praying. She hadn't moved from her spot when I came back down two hours later. For some, the religion is the key component.

For others, it's somewhere in the middle. School girls take their path from one love stone to the other very seriously. If you can walk from one stone to the other with your eyes closed successfully, you'll have good fortune in love. Perhaps those girls didn't believe in the power of kami or in all of the Shinto and/or Buddhist teachings, but they believed that process would have an impact on their future. Tourists played along with this belief, though the extent to which everyone believes remains a mystery.

Whatever their purpose, lots of people visit these places. Lots of people want to see them and experience them. I had a great time seeing them, but the intersections of these things are still a mystery to me.