Fushimi-Inari Taisha

Today Daniel and I took a short daytrip to Kyōto to see Fushimi-Inari Taisha, a shrine known for its kitsune statues and many torii gates. It was cool and drizzly this morning when I woke up to make breakfast before we left, but the rain stopped and it wasn’t as cold as I expected. We walked to Makino-Eki and took the trains to Fushimi-Inari, which is a pretty cool little local train station with fox pictures everywhere.

We walked up the touristy street to get to the shrine, and Daniel wasn’t watching when he tried to cross the street and almost got flattened by a bicycle. But we made it to the shrine okay, and when we arrived we were amazed; it was so crowded and big! Sundays are always busy at shrines, but this was crazy. Then we realized that it was because Shichi-Go-San is coming up. There were a lot of little kids all dressed up for the holiday there with their families. Cute little girls in bright pink kimono, and these two adorable little five year old boys who were loving the attention from their families and kept swooshing their hakama around. I took a lot of pictures of other people’s kids; is that creepy? Oh well.

We saw lots of fox statues and took lots of pictures with them. One thing that surprised me, though, was this thing called the Horse Shrine. It was this little shed-like shrine structure with a big white horse statue inside, kind of in the fashion of something you’d see on a carousel, but bigger. On the altar area in front of it people had left offerings of carrots. ^_^ I thought that was pretty cool. I’m not sure why there were horses there. Kitsune makes sense, because they’re associated with Inari, but I’m not sure about horses.

Then we continued up the mountain from the main shrine, through the hiking trails that are made tunnel-like from all the torii that people have donated lining the paths. It was kind of creepy, actually, being in this old-growth forest on a dreary day surrounded by all these vermillion gates. I’ve got some pictures that make the Body Chute at Waverly Hills look pretty comfy. It was such a beautiful place though, and I wish we could have stayed longer. The whole torii trail takes about two hours, though, and we didn’t have the energy or time for it. But we got to go to the part of the shrine that displays the main object of worship, a sacred mirror. It’s really unusual for shrines to display something so holy, but there it was. I took a picture; I hope that’s okay. I also gave money to the kami and bought an amulet for Betsy, so maybe that makes up for it.

Anyway, we came home after walking back to the station and stopping at Mister Donut in Makino, although I didn’t buy anything. But now I know that they have delicious-looking chocolate donuts, so maybe some other time. I napped this afternoon, had curry rice for supper, and did some homework. And that is all.

If you have a Facebook account, you can see my pictures from the shrine today, as well as some other miscellaneous things, by going here.