This is the Meiji Jingu Shrine dedicated to the Emperor and Empress Meiji in 1920. I cannot resist a little history lesson first.  (More on the shrine in just a moment.)   In feudal Japan, a person's future depended upon one's rank, family, or class.  When a group of soldiers wrested power from the Tokugawa Shogunate and restored it to the Emperor Meiji in 1868, the caste system was eliminated and replaced by western-style education as the pathway to economic and political success.  The new government set up the prestigious University of Tokyo in 1877 with five additional  universities to follow.  Competition to get a seat in an elite university is still intense, and the selection process, highly competitive.  The Chinese Confucian idea of using exams as the best measure of a person's competence quickly became the norm in Japan.  Therefore, students work very hard to earn a place in an elite university because prestigious future careers depend upon it.  Hence, the high volume of students visiting the Shinto Shrines (and temples) with requests for success in state examinations.  

Shintoism is the indigenous religion of Japan and involves the worship of ancestors, national heroes, and all natural things including mountains, trees, birds, seas, foods, and more.  

The tall wooden poles with top crossbeams signify a shrine's entrance gate and is called a torii.  Individuals, religious and not, are expected to bow when entering and again when departing.  I did not read the website instructions before visiting and so did neither.

 Shrines also have a communal dipper where practitioners wash their hands and rinse out their mouths for purification.  Julia and I learned how to do this properly at the tea ceremony and it goes like this:  
1.  Pour water over your left hand.
2.  Pour water over your right hand.
3.  Pour water into your left hand and rinse your mouth, spitting out the water outside the water basin (and not into it!)
4.  Rinse your left hand a final time.
5.  Rinse the dipper by filling it and letting the water flow down the dipper's handle for cleansing.  Never drink from the cup!

At the money collection box, adherents toss in coins, bow twice, clap twice (to awaken the gods?), make a wish, and bow again.  I stood by, imaging what each worshiper might be wishing for...a baby? a spouse? good health? ten million yen? or, yes, good exam scores?