I Had Never Heard Of The Green Onion Ceremony,

until now,

but then Negi-san, the head priest at Aruka Shrine has only been performing the green onion ceremony for about four years at the Aruka Shrine in Japan’s Ebina City, it is the oldest shrine in all of Sagami Province, photographs Aruka Shrine/Twitter,

apparently the green onion ritual was inspired by the head priest’s desire to soften the formal and stiff perception of religion and clergy. A few years ago, 49-year-old Miwako Kojima put on a fake panda head and became Panda Myiaji, a lovable character design to attract more people to Aruka Shrine. Then, in 2017, Kojima got a new idea. The name of the head priest “negi” had the same pronunciation as the word “onion” in Japanese, so she decided to create a new character and ritual around that similarity. And that’s how Negi Head was born,

the 2 meter tall head gear is not best suited to go through doorways, so most ceremony's take place out of doors,

a video of this year’s onion ritual recently went viral on Twitter, with a musical accompaniment, it showed Negi Head struggling to get his onion headgear through the smaller circle, which was lower and smaller this year, probably to make the ritual more of a challenge, the popularity of Negi head has inspired other priests at the shrine to make their own onion-shaped headgears, and visitors at the Aruka Shrine can see all of them performing all sorts of weird rituals and dances, to follow the exploits of Negi Head, follow the official Aruka Shrine Twitter account, where Miwako Kojima frequently posts photos and videos, the shrine of the green onion, I wonder if another fruit or vegetable will be used in the future?