We had a long list of things we had half planned on doing in Kyoto, and most of them didn’t happen. We didn’t get to the Imperial Palace, or see Ryoanji’s famous dry garden. I even had to miss out on the Manga museum, and the cinema dedicated to the works of Tezuka Osamu (creator of Astro Boy). But one thing I refused to miss was the walk to the Fushimi Inari shrine, even if it meant waking up at 5:30am.
The shrine itself wasn’t what I was interested in seeing – it was the hundreds of torii gates that arch over the path up the mountain. After our last experience at trying to get to the top of a mountain, we’d decided that it was pretty unlikely we’d make it to the top, and since we had to check out by 11am we probably didn’t have time anyway. So the plan was leave the ryokan at 6am, spend a few hours doing the lower sections of the walk and then get back in time for breakfast and check out.
Suprisingly the plan was executed to the letter, and we turned up at the base of the mountain with no-one but a few joggers and some people walking their dogs to disturb us. Walking through the corridors of torii was quite eerie – in places the gates are so close together that the sun barely gets through (at least not so early in the day). I went a bit snap happy, as it was such a rarity to be able to take photos without having other people waiting for me to finish so they could take their photo, or walking into frame just as I’d press the shutter button. As we left the walk the Shinto priests who look after the shrine had just begun their morning ceremonies, and more bleary eyed tourists were arriving – seems despite what I said the other day, you can in fact beat the crowds.
After breakfast and packing, Holly headed back to the shops for some last minute purchases, and I spent some time exploring the rather large temple that sits just a block away from the ryokan. Not being covered in gold, or housing a giant Buddha, it doesn’t seem to get the tour buses, but I thought it was still rather impressive.
Unfortunately Holly missed her bus back from the downtown area, so we had a mad dash to the station to get our train to Kanazawa (nearly missing our train out of town seems to be turning into a regular thing). Luckily as soon as we went through the ticket gates we were standing on Platform 0 (yes, zero…go figure) which turned out to be exactly where we needed to be.
Now safe and sound in Kanazawa, we’ve started compiling our to do list – thankfully so far it seems a lot shorter than Kyoto’s.
I’m glad you went snap happy-we all will benefit from that in due time, and in that way feel as if we saw the sights too! Sounds like Kyoto has a lot of interesting things to do and see, and I guess you will always wish you had more time in a place like that. Happy snapping!
Sounds great. looking forward to the snaps.
Ian.
Beautiful shots! Looks like you guys are having an incredible trip…
I think you may have stirred up a desire in me to check out Japan.
Here, here Niall – I’m feeling exactly the same. (Esp appreciated the food entry, predictably – I want that BEEF !)