Engagement on the topic of religion has led me to regularly get given hell because I believe a religion and a culture are oftentimes one and the same. I tend to respond to people who say that with a level of acerbicity, not least of which because a religion with no culture is hollow, devoid of morals and beliefs. This is an issue I find many liberal reconstructive polytheists facing. They deride traditional orgs as LARPers or whatnot, but themselves their practices and beliefs would be unrecognizable to people of their historical practices.
As a Latin American, I have a very tenuous relationship with the culture of the US, the Southeastern part in particular. In my daily life I'm polite, friendly and accomodating, because the three cultures I take most after, that of my ancestry (Spain), Japanese, and Chinese, are very much respectful of elders and others. We don't ascribe to thes puritanical individualism that pervades modern liberalism, and neither is it based on protestantism or catholicism. It's very different.
I embody traits of benevolence, modesty and self reliance. But this is not just about me. Shinto has a lot of cultural background that cannot be discarded. The Japanese keep their spaces clean, tidy and free of clutter. You don't flick cigarette butts on the ground there. There's no spittle, no trash littering the streets. It's very orderly, and Shinto inherits some of that from the legalistic views of Confucianism.
So what's my point? Don't be so ready to cut away tradition and morality or to take on a religion you can't handle, IF you can't actually understand the nuance and cultural connections behind it. You cannot graft Shinto onto a shallow Western lifestyle. You must do better. It, and you, deserve better.
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