Kyoto: Day 1

I made it back, and I'm SO happy I got to go!!  Kyoto was an amazing experience.  If my feet hadn't given out I would've stuck around for another day.  I know I'll be going back again eventually for the flee market at Toji temple, some of the sights on the Western side, and a quick trip to Osaka and Takarazuka.

ANYWHO.  My awesome fun trip! There was LOTS of walking & hiking, lots of sitting still and admiring the surroundings & history, and lots of detouring off the route I'd planned for that day...just for the heck of it.

I started wandering the minute I arrived in Kyoto, actually.  That's how quickly my fear disappeared.  Everything was easy to navigate, and I only used my phone during the first day of my trip.

I had made plans to visit sights that were relatively close to each other, in North Eastern Kyoto.  But there was one place in particular that I reeeeeaaaalllly wanted to see, but it was in South Kyoto.  And now that I was there, not worried about getting lost anymore, I told myself I might as well, right?

I took a train south to the Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine. I think it's one of the 2 shrines in Kyoto that most people would recognize. Fushimi Inari Taisha is a Shinto shrine.  Shinto 神道 translates to Way of God(s).  The Shinto religion is REALLY old, and is Japan's traditional religion.

You walk half a block from the train station and poof.  The entrance to the shrine appears.
Don't worry, you'll recognize it in a minute.

Here is the main entrance gate to Fushimi Inari Taisha.  The shrine property is pretty huge.
The Deity of Fushimi Inari Taisha is Inari, God of Business & Rice.

This shrine has lots and lots of dog statues.  They have something to do with this shrine's deity I'm guessing.
*Edit: They are actually foxes.  Foxes were regarded as messengers.

All of the temples/shrines I went to had ways you could leave a prayer or wish.  You can leave this style of wish only at the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine.  They're foxes. You can draw on the front and write your wish/prayer on the back.  I think it was like 300 yen or something?

You can also pay 100 yen to reach your hand into a box and pick out a small fortune.  If it's good, you keep it in your wallet.  If it's bad, you tie it up on one of the railings here, and the shrine will keep the bad luck from getting to you.

I find it funny because for the smallest moment I was worried I wouldn't be able to find the path of toriis. Turns out it's IMPOSSIBLE to miss.  There must've been a few thousand of them all over Mount Inari.

Foooouuund them.
Each torii was donated by separate businesses.

 The pathway takes you on a trek up the mountain.  I'm glad I randomly decided to do this on the first day.  It was a great hike. I was completely awe-struck.

Higashi forest.  So pretty!!!

If you were walking towards me in this shot, you'd be able to see the writings on each torii.

There were lots of places to stop and rest, or stop and worship on the trek upwards.  I watched lots of people do this, but I didn't do it.  I'd love to find out the meaning behind the steps of worship and more about the religion.

For the first little bit I was kinda bummed, because I thought they had replaced the old toris with newer plastic ones.  I was happy to be wrong.  They are indeed wood, and are replaced all the time.  This one is set to be replaced soon.

Here's what the inside of the black part of the pillars looks like.

This is near the bottom of the path. I know I haven't mentioned it yet, but has anyone seen Memoirs of a Geisha?

On my way up, I was passing yet another group of shrines you could pray at, when I heard a meow.  I'm not kidding, this cat was saying hi to me.

There were so many.  It was surreal.  It's a beautiful place!

There were lots and LOTS of caterpillars crawling everywhere.  That time of the year I suppose.

 From reading about it, I'd thought there would be just one little row of toriis to walk through.  It turned out to be a very long series of paths up the mountain, with a few shrines you could stop and worship at on the way

So many.  Sometimes I wondered if they also included graves too.  I still don't quite know.
*Edit: No graves.  Purely deity worship.

This is a cemetery at a nearby temple, so it makes me think that Fushimi Inari Taisha didn't have graves.

I made it to the top, but didn't take photos.  There were a couple things I decided to keep to myself :-)

I'm not sure what is written on the toriis.  I recently learned that when you pass through a torii, you are leaving the profane part of the world and entering a sacred place. If I had known that while I was on the hike, I'd have been intimidated by walking under so many of them!
 

My legs started trembling pretty bad on my way down.  I had to keep moving, because they trembled worse when I stood still.  The weird thing is, it wasn't because they were tired.  I'd hiked with Hillary on a mountain 10 times harder than this, and my legs didn't tremble at all on that one.  I think it had something to do with the overwhelming newness factor or something.  Because I wasn't tired.  It was a strange feeling.

If I had to use one word to describe my whole trip, it'd be BEAUTIFUL.

 Found this interesting frog shrine area on my way down.  CUTE!

Before going to check out my hotel, I spied a shrine atop a far off mountain.  How COOL is that.

End of my day 1 photos.  I rode the train back up to Shijo street (which is where you'd go if you wanted to by ridiculously expensive stuff), near my hotel. There are some streets just off of Shijo that are good to shop at, and a cool farmers market as well. I ate some sort of sweet potato carrot concoction from one of the little food stalls for dinner. I also went to a Takoyaki place.  This was a new experience and a silly blunder for me.  What you do is you put your money in and then push a button for what you want to order.  A ticket prints out and you give it to the cook so they can get started.  Well, the buttons had no pictures and I was getting nervous so I just pushed one quickly.  Turns out I pushed the freakin "Jumbo Takoyaki" button.  I walked away with 3 giant boxes of Takoyaki.  I was full after one box (each box has 6 bites in it.)  Lesson learned.

I loved the whole sleeping in a pod experience.  I'd only change 1 thing, and that would be the pillows.  They're like sand bags.  You can also hear ALL the sounds the other lodgers make, but that never bothered me because I had headphones in all night.  I felt bad for them actually, because I tend to roll around in my sleep. It was so quiet, I'm pretty sure they heard my pencil as I wrote.  My pod was so comfortable.  You could stretch without being cramped, and it was dark in the pod room, no matter what time of day.  They gave you a yukata to sleep in, towels, toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, soap, slippers, everything!  I would definitely look for another one of those again.  SUPER cheap and a great location.