Shrines

We realized our vacation was pushing us over the edge after one phone call, or more precisely, the one phone call we couldn't make. My husband, Steve, and I had come to Japan in May to spend 10 days in a land that had long intrigued us. It had intrigued my brother-in-law Jim so much that he moved to Tokyo and has made it his home for more than a decade.

“The Help” was the upset winner Sunday night at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, taking home trophies for Octavia Spencer, Viola Davis and for the ensemble - the equivalent of Oscar's best picture. The ensemble win for the drama about racism in the South in the early 1960s was a surprise. Many thought the honor would go to the black-and-white silent film “The Artist,” which had been on a seemingly unstoppable roll going into the show. Davis accepted on behalf of the cast just moments after she won for outstanding performance by a female actor for playing a domestic who tries to tell the world about the plight of African American servants and their white employers.

Every Aug. 15, the normally serene Yasukuni shrine in the center of Tokyo becomes the setting for a stakeout. The watchers are Japan's media. And they're watching for politicians, keeping count of who does and who does not show at this shrine to the war dead on the emotionally charged anniversary of Imperial Japan's surrender in World War II. With its soothing lanterns and elegant rice-paper walls, the 140-year-old Yasukuni is a place of contemplation and contention. The Shinto shrine is the repository for the souls of the roughly 2.5 million soldiers who died in the emperor's wars, and supporters say it serves the same purpose as Arlington in a country that has no national war cemetery.

Bomb blasts targeting Shiite Muslim gatherings Tuesday in two Afghan cities killed at least 59 people and injured 150, a rare outbreak of sectarian violence in a country racked by 10 years of war with Taliban insurgents. A noontime blast in Kabul, the capital, involved a suicide bomber hidden among a throng of Shiite worshipers outside the Abul Fazal Abbas shrine, said Gen. Mohammed Zahir, head of criminal investigations for the Kabul police. That attack killed at least 55 people and injured 134, the Interior Ministry said.

Every Friday, Margarita Jimenez comes to see the virgin in the parking lot, where kids scream, cars honk and the air stinks of exhaust. She turns to the scene of chaos and asks: "Anyone want to pray with me?" No one responds, but she pulls out her rosary beads, bows her head and begins. She knows that in the City of Angels, others share her devotion. Catholics have long created their own sacred spaces here. They build altars in parking lots, chapels in shopping malls, grottos in back alleys and shrines in weed-choked vacant lots.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz today visited three of China's most revered places of pilgrimage, marking U.S. recognition that traditional values continue to provide an important counterpoint to forces of change in this country. Shultz toured Taishan, "the mountain of tranquility," and the grave and birthplace of Confucius, the ancient sage who preached order and respect for authority.

In Venice Beach, vendors along the boardwalk now sell toy soldiers toting American flags, while pizza joints tout their 99-cent combo meals as if none of the events of the last two weeks had occurred. But yards away on 19th Avenue, neighbors seem to be fending off both of these images with some of their own. In the middle of the walkway between Pacific Avenue and Speedway, a turquoise Buddha figurine stands watch over the residents of the houses and apartment buildings nearby.

The day after Manhattan Beach Police Officer Martin Ganz was killed while making a traffic stop, grieving relatives, friends and strangers began placing wreaths and bouquets outside a Bank of America branch in Manhattan Beach Village near where the officer was shot. Since then, the site, above, has become a shrine to the officer, who died Dec. 27 and was buried Monday at Inglewood Memorial Park after a ceremony attended by Gov. Pete Wilson and more than 2,500 law enforcement officers.

The ceremony began in late afternoon, the bright sun bringing squints to the eyes of those gathered before a marble statue depicting the Virgin Mary perched in one corner of the church courtyard. The statue, draped by a white ankle-length cape, stood a few feet above a shallow basin where water trickled gently from among charcoal-colored rocks. Parishioners listened proudly as officials of St.

Vandals have destroyed statues and other religious articles in a community grotto in this central New Mexico town. The Villanueva grotto -- an open-air hilltop shrine built in the 1950s by locals -- was a place of peace for area Roman Catholics seeking to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe, considered the town patroness. "Never have we seen such utter vandalism and sheer, utter hatred," said the Rev. Francis Malley, Catholic pastor for the surrounding parish, as he stood near the wreckage.

The bride was beautiful. The groom was a handsome prince. Two billion people around the world watched the wedding ceremony performed in April in Westminster Abbey. I was one of them. Even though my London flat is around the corner from the abbey, my best view was on TV. Once the big day was over, though, I was prompted to take a more up-close look at my legendary neighbor. I began at the western door, whose twin-towered facade is the postcard image of Westminster Abbey - ironic, because the towers are much newer than the rest of the gothic structure.

MUSIC Put on your saddest pair of black jeans, dye your hair dark, grab your runniest black eyeliner and cry into your morning coffee: Morrissey, the king of melancholy rock, is in town. The beloved, deep-voiced crooner and former frontman of the Smiths will bring his most practiced pout to the stage along with a host of songs off his new greatest hits collection sure to deliver the eager audience straight back to its most awkward high school years. The Shrine Auditorium, 665 W. Jefferson Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Sat. $45 to $79.50.

On a perfectly clear afternoon last week, Eames Demetrios, grandson of the pioneering, multitalented designers Charles and Ray Eames, met me at the house and studio in Pacific Palisades that his grandparents built for themselves in the late 1940s. The living room of the boxy, steel-framed house was empty, its contents having been carefully packed up and carted 10 miles east to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. As part of LACMA's "Living in a Modern Way: California Design 1930-1965," a major show in the Pacific Standard Time series , the items, more than 1,800 in all, have been painstakingly reassembled inside a full-sized replica of the house.

Every Friday, Margarita Jimenez comes to see the virgin in the parking lot, where kids scream, cars honk and the air stinks of exhaust. She turns to the scene of chaos and asks: "Anyone want to pray with me?" No one responds, but she pulls out her rosary beads, bows her head and begins. She knows that in the City of Angels, others share her devotion. Catholics have long created their own sacred spaces here. They build altars in parking lots, chapels in shopping malls, grottos in back alleys and shrines in weed-choked vacant lots.

Two suicide bombers killed at least 42 people at a shrine in central Pakistan on Sunday, the latest in a series of attacks on places of worship linked to sects opposed by militants. The attack occurred at Sakhi Sarwar, a Sufi shrine in a village outside the southern Punjab city of Dera Ghazi Khan. In the past, Sufi shrines have been targeted by the Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups that regard the strain of Islam to be tantamount to heresy. More than 1,000 people had gathered at the shrine when the bombers detonated suicide vests filled with explosives.

Reporting from Nagano, Japan Fame is fleeting, but mountains are eternal. Or so it seems in Nagano, the mountain-ringed city in the center of Honshu, Japan's main island. Nagano had a brief brush with international fame when it hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics, but the city center has returned to its former self, a comfortably modern medium-size downtown spread out below the imposing Zenkoji Buddhist Temple. But the mountainous prefecture, or administrative region, encircling it seems ancient, with its Shinto shrines, hot springs and villages trapped in time.

Christian leaders reopened shrines and churches in the Holy Land on Saturday after a 24-hour closure but threatened to shut their doors again if Jewish settlers remain in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. One hundred fifty Jewish settlers moved into a four-building complex owned by the Greek Orthodox Church in the Christian Quarter on April 11. The move interrupted Easter celebrations and provoked demonstrations by angry clerics and Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim.

Militants seized control of an Islamic shrine in northwestern Pakistan and renamed it the Red Mosque in support of a pro-Taliban cleric who was killed in an army siege in Islamabad. About 70 militants overran the shrine of Pashtun freedom fighter Sahib Turangzai and its accompanying mosque in the Mohmand tribal region Sunday, a militant representative and a local official said separately.

As I sat on a high ledge of the 734-year-old Mingalarzedi Temple, looking out over the hundreds of ancient temples around Bagan, I wondered how long it would take a visitor to see them all. Archaeologists say there once were about 5,000 temples, but earthquakes, decay and long-ago looters have destroyed more than half of them. Still, that's a lot of temples to explore in this 16-square-mile archaeological treasure trove. We visited Myanmar in February 2010 and, yes, I did feel a twinge of guilt when booking the trip.

After an incarceration stint and the brick of his rock album "Rebirth," Lil Wayne is trying to reclaim his Greatest Rapper Alive mantle with actual, you know, rapping. Some leaked singles have been well-received, and his delirious, froggy drawl hasn't lost an inch in the clink. This set celebrates his NBA devotion over All-Star weekend. Shrine Expo Center, 655 Jefferson Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Fri. $100.