Just something I picked up along the way

I thought this was common knowledge in Japan but it seems it isn’t. Here in the Shonai region of Yamagata, it’s not unusual to have a Buddhist altar and directly above a Shinto altar. This reflects the combined Shinto and Buddhist tradition of this area, but that’s not what I most want to get at.

What I most want to get at is that there shouldn’t be anything above the Shinto altar on the second floor that you do a lot of living or you walk over. Using the area for storage is fine, but as a corridor is out of the question. It’s as if you’re standing on the Kami itself, a definite no-no, and it also means you are blocking the Kami’s entrance into your home, so you would want to avoid that.