Young man me likely would have thought, “wow, cool tradition!”

Old man me thinks “$390 million? How are they funding this?! That seems like a massive sum of money to throw down the drain every 20 years.”

Then I did the back of envelope math. Assuming 20% comes from donations, then all you’d need is a $380m fund earning a real 3% to fund the building of the next temple. That’s very doable.

> “Twenty years from now, the older generation — our grandfathers — will likely no longer be here. And those of us who are still young now will then see our grandchildren involved in the next” version of Ise, said Yosuke Kawanishi, a Shinto priest whose family company crafts miniature replicas of the shrine. “After 20 years, the shrine we are building will have deteriorated quite a bit. But instead of thinking, ‘It’s a shame to tear down something we worked so hard to build,’ we think, ‘It’s been 20 years, so we want the deity to move into a beautiful, fresh, new shrine.’”

Reminds me of what Jefferson said about the US constitution, but it should be rewritten every 19 years