10000-torii-wakeup-call

Started the second morning in Kyoto with a quick train ride to Inari. There we spent a good hour and a half walking the shrine of Fushimi-inari of the Inari Cult. Dedicated to rice and sake. The paths here cover 4km with more than 10,000 torii gates, thae famous orange ones. These gates are an offering by local and national business’ asking for sucess, that are put up for 10 years. Humid but sheltered by the gates we walked up the path to the plateau overlooking Kyoto, checking out the shrines all around. Not stopping here for long we made our way to the top, which was a shrine surrounded by trees. Many foxes adorn the shrines, whcih are meant to be messengers of the rice gods.

From here we headed back to Nijo Castle. No photos inside, starting to notice a pattern. Inside you get to see the layout and what each room was used for as well as the aweome painted walls. The best bit was the nightengale floor, where every floorboard squaked to warn of intruders. With people walking along it sound like birds tweeting. No matter how lightely I trod on these they always squeeked. The grounds were nice to walk round, but no the best we have seen.

By the time we finished these it was actualy quite late. So back for dinner and a night chatting with lots of people at the hostel.