Staff at a Tokyo shrine are busy preparing wooden figurines of Eurasian bullfinches ahead of its annual bullfinch-exchange rite on Jan. 24 and 25.
The Japanese name for the Eurasian bullfinch is "uso," a homonym for the word meaning "falsehood."
During the rite at Kameido Tenjin shrine in Koto Ward, people bring along statuettes they bought the previous year, devote them to the shrine and exchange them for new versions. By doing so, it is believed that bad things can be turned into "lies" and exchanged for good fortune.
To create the figurines, priests and other shrine staff paint likenesses of the small bird carved from cypress.
This year, the shrine plans to prepare 30,000 birds in 11 different sizes.
"As we finish off the statuettes, we're wishing for the coronavirus pandemic to end soon and for this to be a good year," the shrine's chief priest said.
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