What the brochures DON'T tell you though is how hard it is to get a picture of the gates without other people in it. Notice this picture is at a curve in the path ;-) I had started my research with Lonely Planet's Japan guide, but on the internet I discovered japan-guide.com which had a lot more information, plus someone on staff who got to the shrine before anyone else and took pictures. Through them, I learned that Inari is the Shinto god of rice. Foxes are Inari's messengers, so there are fox representations everywhere.
The foxes started at the train station.
From there, we followed the crowds up a street that barely had enough room for people and cars. There were two police officers at the intersection near the shrine entrance trying to minimize catastrophes. Once we get through the first gate though, it became a relatively calm pedestrian street.
The street was lined with vendors, most of whom were selling food. There was a festive atmosphere.
At first glance, I thought these next items were the Japanese equivalent of Thai meat on a stick, but when I looked closer, I realized they were actually small birds, head and all.
We had fueled up that morning at a Doutor Coffee we found around the corner from our apartment with seats looking out the window at the river and all the pedestrian traffic,
so, interesting as all the food on the temple street looked, we decided to just take pictures and keep walking. The main entrance to the shrine has a giant torii gate in front of it. All of my pictures are FULL of people, so I'm going to use japan-guide.com's picture to illustrate this.
All of the gates are paid for by individuals, and then lined up along the path. If you can't afford a full sized one though, there are smaller options available.
After walking around the main temple area, we headed through the gates, and up the mountain.
We enjoyed the walk, the gates, and the nature that surrounded it. Even with all the people, you could see how this could be a meditative activity.
We decided not to go all the way to the top of Mount Inari, and instead followed a path off to the side that led us by some family shrines.
We made our way slowly back to the train station, exploring as we went. When we got back into the main part of Kyoto, we were right near the steak restaurant we had seen the night before. We had worked up an appetite with our gate trek, so it seemed like the perfect choice for lunch. Jeff and I each got a lunch set that came with awesome cuts of Kobe beef, miso soup, rice, cabbage salad, and various extra condiments. There was also a lemon juice dressing for the cabbage.
We drank our soup and ate our cabbage salad while the grill heated up, and then it was time to cook.
It was SO delicious. I want to go back right now. It turned out to be really good that we had such a hearty lunch, since we spent most of the rest of the day walking around Kyoto.
After lunch, we took a bus to Gingkakuji, also known as the Silver Pavillion. It's up a hill in the north east corner of Kyoto. Our plan was to visit it, and then walk back downhill to the main part of the city. We got there pretty easily, and there was no line to buy tickets which was nice. There was a set path to follow around the man made lake and up through the rock and moss gardens. Again, there were plenty of other tourists there, but it was still beautiful and calming.
Right outside the grounds is the start of the Philosopher's Path, a tree lined walkway along a canal.
I've seen pictures of the path during cherry blossom season, and it looks stunning, but this was still beautiful, and it was also peaceful, since we had it mostly to ourselves. As we looked at Google Maps, we realized that there is a system of canals that go down the hill and eventually feed into the big river near our apartment. We thought it would be fun to follow the water and figured we'd end up where we wanted to be eventually. A lot of times we were just walking on a small path along a canal.
Occasionally we found a shrine,
or a statue.
At one point we walked by the zoo. At another point we walked by a temple.
We figured the canal water must be very clean, because we saw a father and daughter catching fish in it.
When we got closer to our apartment we found this neat fence.
Even though it wasn't as cool as I had hoped it would be in Japan, it was still much cooler than the weather we have in Thailand, and it was wonderful to be able to spend the afternoon just walking around without completely melting.
After our adventures, we rested at the apartment for a little bit. Jeff wanted ramen for dinner, so he did some research and found that the number one rated place was just down the street from our apartment. We got our shoes back on and headed out to try and find it.
Our apartment was right off a major intersection full of stores, cars, and people.
Google Maps told us to veer off into an alley with a convenience store and not much else. We had our doubts, but there were plenty of other people around, and it didn't seem sketchy. We were really glad we gave it a try, because around the corner we discovered a series of narrow pedestrian streets lined with stores and restaurants.
We found the ramen place and discovered it had an hour and a half long wait. We were hungry and surrounded by restaurants, so we decided we would find great ramen, instead of "the best." As we were walking around, we saw a place called Tiger Gyoza.
The name sounded promising, and they had seats at the bar. They had ramen and the biggest gyoza I have ever seen in my life. You can guess which ramen was Jeff's (Hint: It's the one COVERED in chilies).
The food was pretty good, but our favorite part was having a view right into the kitchen.
We could see everything being prepared and getting picked up. We also got a close look at our neighbors' meals and how they ate them. It was a lot of fun.
To complete my happy day, Jeff let me wander around the Disney store on the way back to the apartment. Japan has a special version of the Disney characters called Tsum Tsum.
For some reason these just make me smile. It was a happy end to a wonderful day in Kyoto.
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