Fushimi Inari Taisha (伏見稲荷大社)

For months, I've been asking friends, boyfriend, everyone that I meet to go with me to Fushimi Inari Taisha  （伏見稲荷大社）. The normal answer is something the lines of, "Michelle, it's on the edge of Kyoto. It's too far. It's a full day trip. Go another day." So for months, I've given in. But finally, with a couple month break, and nothing better to do than to spend time with friends, experience Japanese culture, and work on my language skills, I finally had the time to convince both Jazmin and Kengo to go with me the famous shrine.

For those of you that aren't familiar with the name, Fushimi Inari is a shrine devoted to the god Inari, who is the god of fertility, rice, agriculture, etc. in Shinto. The shrine itself is known for being one of the biggest in Kyoto, and definitely one of the biggest, if not the biggest, shrine to Inari in Japan. It's most famous though for the fact that it has a row of red torii gates, which lead around the mountain. These are donated by companies especially for good fortune. The whole focus on Fushimi Inari began in 965 or so in the Heian period. During this time, the Emperor Murakami decided to have all official documents reported to the gods. Fushimi Inari was of course included in the list of important shrines. Inari is also tied closely with foxes because these were believed to be Inari's messenger of choice. It has been hypothesized that this is due to the fact that during the planting and harvesting seasons, foxes would move into the farms to search for more food, etc., and this eventually came to be associated with the god Inari. Whether this is true or not is still up for debate though.

So with the history lesson over, let's move to some pictures.

We decided to walk the mountain trail, which takes about 2-3 hours, because we honestly had nothing better to do. Unfortunately for Kengo, he had run earlier in the morning, so walking up thousands of steps didn't sound like the best idea to him. Luckily though, we were able to persuade him, so we headed off up to Mount Inari.

The beginning of the walking adventure. Note how there are no steps here.

Over time, it got to be more like this, which is when we realized our mistake. We had already climbed so many steps by this point that it would been pointless to turn back. In fact, I think Kengo ran it for a while, but then he realized that it was getting steeper and the steps weren't stopping, so we waited for a bit.

At the top of the mountain. Note all the small sub-shrines surrounding the main shrine.

As we were walking back, it started to get darker. We grabbed some dinner, which was a classic kitsune-udon （きつねうどん）, which is a fried tofu slice inside a bowl of udon noodles.

Overall, it was a really great day.

Michelle