after our wonderful rest at our cute little hotel we woke up bright and early for a day crammed full of sightseeing. there are somewhere around 1600 shrines and temples in kyoto so we had a hard time whittling the list down to just three days worth. at the top of the list (mine at least) was fushimi inari. it’s actually a little south east of the central area of kyoto so i guess not that many people go there - though it’s certainly popular enough. wikipedia article on fushimi inari with a link to the official website too.

anyway. it was really awesome!! there are thousands of bright reddish-orange torii (gates) that line paths going up the mountain. they were all donations to the temple, so the writing that’s on the back side says who donated it - sort of like permanent, pretty advertising for a lot of companies apparently. it felt like i was walking through a giant modern art project. the gates came in all different sizes - some of them were about normal ceiling height and some of them were monstrously huge.

We went about half way through the paths and took about 8million photos… we took a different pathway down and ended up seeing a lot of little side temples (and very few gates) and a bunch of average japanese residences. plus a really fun poster (hhheheheheh) and a strange buddha. we got hungry and ate breakfast at a SUPER cute and tasty place before moving onto our next bit of sightseeing.