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The Fushimi Inari Taisha is located in Fushimi-ku, Kyoto and is the head shrine of Inari. Inari Okami was the Japanese Shinto god of rice and agriculture. The shrine resides at the base of the Inari yama (mountain). Bright beautiful big orange shrine buildings.
Since Inari was also seen as the patron of business, each Japanese business over the years would donate a Torii, the big gates, to worship Inari in hopes of wealth and good business. So as you can see, the torii's line the footpaths up the mountain. The pathway wanders 4km up the mountain and it is said that there are 1300 torii gates. We found the torii's could be made of stone or wood. The back of each tori is engraved with the sponsor's name.
A fork in the road - which way?!
Path lined with never-ending torii gates:
And if get claustrophobic surrounded by so many orange torii gates and want to step out, you're out of luck. You are literally surrounded by a thick forest and very steep slopes.
But alas, we reached another shrine, nestled somewhere along the mountain. Here we can cleanse ourselves (like to sumo wrestlers) with some cleansing water using the cleansing ladle.
Drink up Matt. I'm sure it's DE-licious! I mean only millions of other people have drank from those ladles before you.
This is the entrance of the next rows of torii gates. The foxes next to the main gates serve as mystical messengers and often have a key (to the rice granary) in their mouths.
This time around, we walked through a small little bamboo forest. Pretty.
How did it get so dark, so quickly?!
After a nice long walk, time to have a little snack and eat tsujiira senbei. These are the original treats of what we know today as the fortune cookie, and dates back to at least the 19th century. Here's the guy who made our tsujiira senbei - yummy!:
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