Eight Million

We cannot say our country is overtly religious, but we can boast of our gods at least in number. 8 million（八百万 やおよろず） is most probably the worlds' record for having the most god population in any one nation, though I don't believe anyone has ever bothered naming them all or even counting them up.
One of the eight million is called Sarutahiko (猿田彦). 2m tall with 1m long protruding nose, he is said to have guided the god Ninigi when he came down to Earth to create Japan. Just a guide as he was, he somehow found his way enshrined in fairly many shrines all over Japan. There is a Sarutahiko shrine too in Suginami ward, Tokyo.

I took all the trouble to mention here the Suginami shrine simply because its priest presided the ground-breaking ceremony of my house a week ago. This ceremony precisely followed the Shinto style ground breaking procedure. We stood in front of the alter set up on the building site(picture). The priest purified us attendants (my family, builders, and the designer) by wielding a rod with some strips of white paper attached on top around our bowed heads, evoked the god with a siren-like voice that we hear before the opening of the Koshien high school baseball games, then told the god that we would build a house, asked for the safety and prosper of our family and then sent the god back with the same voice as when he was called in. In between, I was handed a mock wooden spade and with it literally "broke" a mound of sand which was supposed to represent the piece of land on which our house was going to be built, saying loudly "えいっ、えいっ、えいっ". It was a bit embarrassing. But I enjoyed it.
I wondered why Sarutahiko got to play a role in the ground-breaking ceremony. I asked the priest about that.
"Oh, the god I called was not Sarutahiko. I called the local gods down here."
Fair enough. Given he is the priest of Sarutahiko shrine, he does not have to bother the god for just a groundbreaking ceremony. A rank-and-file god will do. That is why we have 8 million gods.