Kasuga Shrine

 I finally located the other shrine that I was looking for, Kasuga Jinja. It was very small and just tucked between a parking lot and a private home. This is the view as I approached it.

 This shrine is typical of neighborhood Shinto shrines in this area, in fact in all of Japan.

I walked up and looked into the altar but could not see very much. There was a small vase on the right and the white things are folded strips of paper called shide. Here is what the Encyclopedia of Shinto has to say about shide:

One type of heihaku, formed by attaching flowing strips of paper or cloth (particularly yū, rough cloth made from the bast fibers of paper mulberry) to a sprig of sakaki, a staff, or a sacred border rope (Shimenawa). Although yū was formerly used, most shide today are made of paper. A variety of methods are used to fold and cut the strips, including those with 2, 4, and 8 folds. Shide are likewise found in a variety of specific styles, the best known of which would include those of Ise, Shirakawa, and Yoshida. Nowadays shide are most frequently found as one component of implements of purification, but they are also suspended from sacred border ropes demarcating sacred or ritual space, in which case they serve to symbolize a sacred border. A Grand Champion (yokozuna) of sumō wrestling wears a decorative shimenawa festooned with shide around his ornamental belt during the ring-entrance ceremonies of a sumō tournament. S

-Inoue Nobutaka