Meiji Jingu: the forest someone planted
A man-made forest, a great torii, and the Sunday drummers in the park next door. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. The great torii (south approach)
Out of *Harajuku* and across the bridge, the south *torii* (shrine gate) marks where the city stops. Step through, turn, and the noise of Takeshita-dori is already gone.

2. The sake-barrel wall
Two walls face each other on the approach — *sake* barrels donated by brewers across Japan on one side, Burgundy wine barrels from France on the other. The wine wall is the one nobody photographs; have it to yourself.

3. The main shrine
*Meiji Jingu* is a *jinja* (Shinto shrine) from 1920, rebuilt after the war. Buy a wooden *ema* plaque and read the others hanging by the courtyard — wishes in forty languages, which tells you who comes here.

4. Meiji Jingu Gyoen (the inner garden)
A separate ticket and worth it, especially mid-June when the iris garden is the reason people come. The rest of the year it's the quietest corner of the forest, with a well the emperor's wife is said to have favoured.

5. Yoyogi Park
Out the west side into the *koen* (park). On a Sunday the rockabilly dancers and the drum circles set up near the fountain; cherry blossom in early April. Any other day it's joggers and a vast lawn — still worth the crossing.

6. Yoyogi-koen station
The Chiyoda-line entrance is on the park's south-west edge. *Sangubashi* on the Odakyu line is the alternative if you doubled back north past the shrine.

Meiji Jingu: the forest someone planted