Fushimi Inari Shrine
This Shrine is just amazing and located in southern Kyoto it is an important Shinto Shrine and predates the capital’s move to Kyoto in 794. Its most famous for its thousands of brilliant red, scarlet pigment torii gates, which work their way up a mountain of network, trails and paths throughout the forest of Mount Inari, which stands at 233 meters high and is part of the shrine’s grounds. The Fushimi Inari Shrine is dedicated to Inari, a Shinto god of rice and is one of the most important of the thousands of shrines in Japan.
As we have said before we enjoy walking and although we were tired, we tend to find the enthusiasm and adventure gives us a second wind so the climb up the mountain didn’t seem too bad considering, especially as it was a warm and sunny day for late October. The thousands of torii gates are absolutely amazing, there are loads and loads! Certainly, quite a unique site, as normally you never see this many in one place.
When we eventually got to the top of the mountain the view of the city below was stunning.
After a fantastic day on the way back to the hotel we decided to stop off at a nice ramen restaurant to save having to go back out after checking in to our hotel as you can imagine it had been a very long day and we were knackered!! By the time our heads hit the pillow we had been awake for approximately 36 hours, we have found by doing this helps reduce our Jetlag.
When we visited this shrine it was our first day of one of our Japan trips (remembering we had been on the move and awake for some 24 hours) once we had dropped our bags off at the hotel it was about a 27min walk to the Shrine, of which we spent the remainder of the day there. Alternatively, Fushumi Inari Shrine can be reached by train from Kyoto Station along the JR Nara Line to Inari Station, and only take 5 minutes.
