Amaterasu at the table

In Shinto tradition, the meal is not divided into starter/main/dessert: food offerings (shinsen) are arranged on light wood trays (sanbō) in a ritual order from purest to most elaborate — first purifying water and salt, then cooked rice, sake, fish and seaweed from the sea, finally mountain vegetables and fruits. Each dish is placed, never tasted before the goddess: it honors Amaterasu, source of light and giver of rice. At the Grand Shrine of Ise, this sacred meal (omike) has been prepared twice daily for over fifteen hundred years.

Amaterasu is, in the myths, the one who gave humans the celestial rice paddies: steamed white rice is the queen offering, always accompanied by sea salt that purifies and sake born from the same grain. Rice, salt, sake: the gustatory trinity of every Shinto table.