If we ask Japanese people that what kinds of religion do you believe, many people would say " I have no particular religion". And as native Japanese, I also agree that our daily lifes are far from religious one, because we celebrate Christmas and saint valentine's day and also we do "Hichigosan" or "Hatumoude".( Hichigosan is a the ritual of sinto and we celebrate children who become the age of 3,5,and 7 years old. And Hatumoude means to go to temple or shrine on new years day and pray fortune for new year.)
However, fundamental parts of Japanese people are still based on Japanese religion; sinto. As the examples of this, I want to suggest three things; Shrines in town, Legend, and Children's stories.
First, when we walk in town, we often find shrines. Some shrines have small playgrounds, like picture above, and some haven't, but shrines are in everywhere in Japan even in big cities. And I'm sure that many Japanese people, especially people from rural district, have played in shrines when they were kid. For kids, precincts, which is playgrounds of shrines, or pounds in shrines are playground even if they doesn't have swing or slide. As they haunt shrines more and more, they are consciously or unconsciously getting what is shrine, why there are shrines and what is "kami" by feeling solemn atmosphere, and being familiar with the idea of Shinto.
Second, legends that parents often tell to their children make children be close to religion. The famous legend, the story of gods of rice is often told to children. The story is that in every each grain of rice, there are seven rice gods, and if we leave even a grain of rice on a rice bowl, rice gods'll curse us. ( The number of god is different depending on region, but in my home town, the number was 7.) This story tells children the basic idea of religion, which is that everything we do is watched by kami.
Finally, Japanese children's stories are often related to kami. In kindergarten or preschool, kids read many such stories and naturally get the idea of religion. In my case, the most impressive one was "kumono-ito"( the string of spider). It is totally story of god and I remember I felt really scary to do bad things.
Like these example, even if we get old and our lifes are not related to religion, religious childhood experiences stay in our mind even when we get adult. And I believe Japanese fundamental parts are still religious.
If you wan to know the story of kumono-ito, click here!
Your post has a lot of potentially interesting examples. But you really don't explain any of them fully enough for people not familiar with this stuff to understand. Consider who your audience is.
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