Stock Photo - Kyoto (Japan): baseball balls at the Shiramine shrine, in northwest Kyoto: very popular among sports devotees, especially soccer fans, as Seidaimyojin is enshrined here. This deity is known as the spirit god of ball sports, and the shrine ´store´ is the only one in Japan which sells ´fighting spirit´ amulets. Therefore, famous sportspersons and club members visit this shrine to buy them and carry them for luck in competition. In 2002 and 2006, the Japan Football Association offered up to the shrine the official balls used in both the World Cups of those years, and the Japan Women’s Volleyball Association also offered up a ball which they had used in the trials for the Athens Olympics.