Japan

Thousand Torii Gates

A Byrd

— 5 min read
Thousand Torii Gates

After returning from Nara on Tuesday, we headed to the Fushimi Inari Shrine, which is famous for its red torii gates — aka the Thousand Torii Gates. You can walk up the mountain behind the main shrine, along a trail that takes you through all the gates and past other little shrines. Multiple people had told us that "the higher up you go, the less crowded it is"!

It was about 4:30pm when we arrived, so we didn't know how far up we'd end up going. We just decided to start off and see how we went. J started counting the torii gates but soon had to give up as some of them were really close together and there were so many people there!

From looking it up just now, I learnt that the thousand gates are just one small section that only takes a couple of minutes to walk through — it's estimated that there are about ten thousand gates on the mountain in total. I was SURE there were a lot more than a thousand — they felt neverending!

We ended up walking the entire 4km route, which took about 2 hours. It was nighttime when we made it back to the bottom of the mountain, so we got to experience the walk during both daylight and darkness, which was great. It was exhausting, but such a classic Kyoto activity and one that gives quite a sense of achievement when you do the whole thing! It was peaceful and picturesque, too.

The main shrine.
Start-of-hike family selfie.
F found a cat to pat along the way.
This little side path was bordered by multiple small shrines. I found a cat to pat here too.
One of the small shrines on the side path.
The writing on the gates said which business had sponsored the gate (and when). Apparently they sponsor a gate in hope of receiving good luck from the Shinto god of rice, Inari.
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By this point we were far enough up the mountain that I could get this video with no people in it!

Panoramic view of Kyoto.
As it grew darker, the gates' shadows looked awesome.
Stopped or spotted? Either way, F was nervous! There were warning signs about monkeys too.
STILL not at the top!
Looking down at a side path we didn't take.
Looking back at the path we'd just walked up.
There were lots of stone fox statues. Apparently the sighting of foxes became associated with a plentiful harvest, so people came to believe foxes were Inari's messengers.
Having a rest!
We reached the top! The boys were very pleased as B had promised them an ice cream if they did the entire trail. 😄
Then we had to do the remaining half of the trek! It wasn't all downhill either... it kept going up/ down/ up/ down for a while longer!
This part of the path was so dark I had to use my phone torch.
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Nighttime view of Kyoto from the same spot as the earlier lookout photos.

Once we were back down the mountain, we took the short train ride back to our closest train station and had Dragon Burger for dinner. It was our second time there — we had also been there for lunch after visiting some friends on Sunday morning. The burgers were designed by a British chef, and they were juicy and delicious!

My burger.
J had two tapas burgers.

Our total walking distance for the day was about 13km, according to B's Google Fit app. This was either our biggest or second biggest walking day of the trip... our record was supposedly 15km in Venice, but I have my doubts about the accuracy of that as it didn't FEEL that long (maybe it counted a ferry ride as walking). But this day definitely felt like 13km!!

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