Hej. For these three days, I have been staying with my friend, in Kaipedia, Lithuania. It has been very fascinating for me here in Klaipeda. She and her family are amazingly so kind that they treated me as if I were VIP guest and showed me to all the interesting places in this town.
　One of the very interesting things I found here is that Lithuanian people used to strongly believe in a nature religion and even nowadays some of them have clear awareness of their belonging to this natural religion. According to this religion, God exists in nature, especially in the sea, forest, wind.. It seems to me that it sounds very similar to Japanese indeginous religion, Shinto.
　There used to be many pagans (minor religions) throughout Europe in the long past. However, these pagans were abandoned and replaced by Christianity. Christian philosophy assumes that human must control nature and nature must be conquered. Thus, these nature belief has to be abandoned.
　It was in 1387 that Lithuania converted its own religion to Christinity, Catholic. Lithusnia was the last country in Europe for conversion to Christian. However, even after Lithuania became Christian, some people, if not many, were reluctant and tried to remain their pagans.
　We went to some of the places where they believe there were festivity related with this pagan. In the forest, many sculptures which were shaped like human, represents variety of Gods, from fire, water, to wind. Some of the caves also showed how people worship for nature God.
　Interesting thing is that now more and more young people in Lithuania started to sympalize with this nature pagan instead of Christinity. Every year on 15th August, some people gather in forest and celebrate for nature by making fire and singing songs.. It might be that because Lithuania had been under control by Russia for a long time, Lithuanian people now try to find their own identity by looking back to this pagan.
　Anyway, I am very happy to see some similarities between Japan and Lithuania in terms of nature religion.