We took a trip the kinkakuji (the golden temple – another world heritage site) in Kyoto and it was a beautiful day with the temple reflecting in the water around it:

Kinkakuji Golden Pavilion

It was also another place where coins were thrown…this time to stone statues along the path through the temple grounds. I watched and the statues were receiving between$5 – $10 in coins being thrown every 10 minutes which would come to $360 – $720 a day. That’s a fair amount of money that people are throwing away (although I’m sure that many look at it as a small donation to the temple).

Coins thrown at stone statues in the temple grounds

I also came across another interesting place where coins were left in the Japanese countryside. There was an old tree truck that had been eaten away by insects in a small shrine on the top of Sasayama castle (the areas where I first lived in Japan). What was interesting was that people were leaving coins hidden in the holes that the insects had eaten away on the tree trunk

Coins wedged in tree trunk

There were actually quite a few coins all around wedged into the tree trunk and it was fun looking in all the nooks and crevices searching for where people had tried to hide their coins.

I’d be curious in trying to find out how much the average person throws a year (or in their lifetime) down wishing wells, toward statues and the like. As I said before, I thought that I would have easily thrown $50+ in my lifetime, but it certainly could be a lot more.