[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by steven

I love that phrase Nyororin-- "divine insurance". I know my father in law has a buttload of beads in his car. He asked me if I knew what they were one day and I was kinda being careful and said something like "for safety?" and he said pretty straight forward that it was to avoid accidents. Ironically some of the beads were hanging from his mirror undoubtedly making it, even if ever so slightly, harder to drive.

Beads hanging off of it sounds a lot more like he has Buddhist beads there. The things you get when blessing your car and annually as shrines are always the little envelope type charms. I don`t think I`ve ever seen beads.

We always replace ours when it puffs up. I am 99.9% certain that the puffiness is because it gets hot in the car and the paper inside comes unfolded or something like that - but we like to think of it as a sign that it`s absorbed so many potential accidents.

Oh, and I don`t think it`s to keep *you* from hitting something, it`s more to keep other people from hitting you.

I've heard people say there are even kami for things like toilets.

There are - there really is one for everything. Our local shrine has the god of pickling...

Just for a little admission-- I once drove through one of those gates. I was driving through some really narrow streets in Fukui-ken and I eventually ended up kind of in a shrine thing (there were houses in it too though so it was very hard to distinguish).

Was it 大瀧? Just a random guess, but it`s fairly close to a popular tourist place in Fukui and has a gate that is commonly driven through.
Driving through one isn`t as odd as it may seem - there are numerous ones over roads. An old picture, but I drive by and through this one pretty regularly.

You might have seen it happen before or read about it, but Japanese people sometimes apologize to inanimate objects.

Something it makes me think of is children being told that their toys will get angry and run away if they don`t treat them well. Except that it doesn`t end with toys, but with most everything around.
It is interesting as a lot of people outside Japan will say this is silly, and that it`s unthinkable... But yet they talk to their car when it won`t start, or swear that their (insert inanimate object) only works when they praise it.