8D Avia Japan Trip: Fushimi Inari Shrine, Kyoto
Kyoto has so many attractions but the thing is, it may not be easy to reach some of these attractions because of their location. On my previous visit to Kyoto three years ago, I remember I had to take bus to reach certain destination like the Golden and Silver Pavillion. However, some of the attractions are reachable by taking train such as Fushimi Inari and Arashiyama. Group tour seldom (or never?) includes Arashiyama as part of their tour itinerary. I suspect this is because the need to spend the night in Kyoto if the operator include Arashiyama in the itinerary. But, Fushimi Inari will always definitely in the itinerary of any tour operator whenever Kyoto is included.
As such, Fushimi Inari is always flooded with visitors from inside and outside Japan. All of them came to Fushimi Inari with the same goal, to take a look and take picture (whenever possible) with the many rows of Japanese torii gates (i.e. the red temple gate). The path to the torii gates are located at the very back of the main temple of Fushimi Inari.
Basically you don’t have to worry about not being able to find the torii gates because you just need to follow the crowd. The torii gates along the entire trail are actually donations by individuals and companies. If you are curious how much does a torii gate cost, well it costs around 400,000 yen for the small one and it can reach 1M yen for the large one.
The name of the donators will be inscribed at the back of the torii gates. However, the front sides of torii gates seem to be inscribed with either phrases or prayers, I am not so sure. Oh right, before you decide to complete the trail, let me just let you know that the torii gate trail at Fushimi Inari is actually a hike to the summit of the mountain. So it’s not like a walk in the park because you will keep on hiking and the hike to the summit and back takes around 2 - 3 hours. However, there is no restriction on how far visitor need to walk. You are free to walk just as far as you wish before making your way back.
To be honest with you, it is almost impossible to have a clean shot of the torii gates (and yourself) at the beginning of the trail. So it is highly advisable to walk further deeper into the trail at least until you pass by the statue of the fox. Oh right, a bit of background may be useful here. Fushimi Inari temple is built to worship Inari, the Shinto god of rice and foxes are thought to be Inari’s messengers. Hmm, now that I take a closer look at the fox, it seems to have a message scroll on its mouth. I wonder what the message that it’s carrying.
Anyway, we managed to visit Fushimi Inari within less than 1 hour. Of course, we definitely would not have time to spend checking out the temple market but as far as I remember, the market at Fushimi Inari is not as huge as the one at Kiyomisu Dera so you probably should spend more time there. When we made our way back to the bus, we saw a small Japanese cemetery which is probably built for the neighbourhood. The cemetery is so neat and well taken care of. In Jakarta, this would be practically impossible for public cemetery.
On the way to Gifu, we made a stop at BBQ restaurant for dinner and I notice that there’s capsule machine (a.k.a. Gacha machine) which gives Rilakkuma or Korilakkuma. My goodness, they are so cute and I can’t believe that you just need 300 JPY to get them because I bet this will cost at least double in Singapore. The morale of the story is, let’s play gacha when we are in Japan.
I managed to get Rilakkuma and pretty much happy with what I get after I assemble him hehe. Konichiwa Rilakkuma!
Another interesting thing that I bought in Kyoto is definitely related to green tea. Malebranche’s green tea langue de chat (i.e. chocolate biscuit) is pretty good especially when you want to pair it with green tea during tea time. However, the biscuit does not last long so consume them fast.
