Deluge at Fushimi Inari Taisha

Fushimi Inari Taisha is probably the most famous site in Japan. Even if you don't know its name, you've seen pictures - rows of thousands of brilliant orange torii gate, winding up a mountain. There are other Inari shrines around Japan, but aside from being the original, what makes this one so impressive is the sheer number of gates - said to be over 10,000. Inari is the Shinto god of rice, and given that rice was so important to the development of Japan that it used to be used as currency, Inari also represents prosperity. The torii gates are donated by companies and individuals, who pay between 400,000 to a million yen to have a gate with their name inscribed on it on the mountain. 

Back to Tokyo Station, where Monica and I got our shinkasen tickets. We chose the Nozomi that was leaving in twenty minutes instead of the one leaving in five, so we were able to get drinks, bento, and sit for a while in the waiting room before moving to the platform. We waited for the cars to be cleaned (which took, like, three minutes), then boarded. We'd been put on the non-Fuji side - it was too cloudy to matter anyway - and another person was given the window seat (our travel companion changed in Yokohama). We spent the ride eating, planning, reading, and napping. After the ride to Nikko the day before, the journey felt super short. It started to rain as we approached Kyoto.

 

We left our bags in another locker and found the JR Nara line. Coming out of the station at Fushimi Inari, we were met by a deluge. The small station entry was crammed with people, a crowd that only grew as another train arrived. After a few minutes with no sign of the rain letting up, I took my woefully inadequate umbrella and ducked around to the shop next door, where I found ponchos for about $5 each. Worth it. Thus armed, we tromped out into the rain and up the gravel path to Fushimi Inari's giant torii gate.

It was close to 5:00 when we arrived. While temples have opening hours, Shinto shrines are generally open 24 hours a day, which made Fushimi Inari a good late afternoon choice.  We looked around for shuin (the booth was already closed, but pages were still being sold) and ema (the torii gate-shaped wish plaques were still available; the foxes I'd been coveting for months were not). :'( Kitsune - foxes - are Inari's messengers, and their statues are seen by the main shrine at the bottom of the mountain and in small shrines along the way to the top. On the plus side, the rain slowed to a drizzle as we walked around, looking.

We started up the mountain. About ten minutes into our walk, the skies opened up again. Along with four other tourists, we dashed into a small shrine housing an ancient tree. It rained - hard - for about 15 minutes. Honestly, it was kind of neat. As we were already soaked, once the rain calmed a bit, we continued on. The crowds were pretty thin - most of the people who'd stayed through the deluge were foreign tourists. We crossed paths with groups of Frenchmen, Spaniards, San Franciscans, and annoying American teens. ("BOI" was not a word I'd expected to hear in Japan.)

Following the heavy rain, parts of the pathway were flooded. We splashed through them. Waterfalls and gutters along the edge of the path were flowing madly. At one point, we saw a leaf move in front of us and bent down to get a closer look - underneath was a crab, just crawling across the road. We passed a shrine to a frog, which also felt totally appropriate and made me think of the frogs on the Tlaloc shrine in Mexico City.

The small shrines than marked the way seemed even more mystical in the rainy twilight. At a fork, we wandered down a deserted path and met a lost German tourist - we were able to give him directions to the top.  We took a few minutes to wander through a graveyard and listened to a bird singing in the trees. The lack of people and noise felt eerie. Returning to the fork, the sun was setting over a twinkling Kyoto, clouds skirting its mountains. It was incredibly beautiful and impossible to do justice with my phone's camera - my camera's battery had died by this point. We watched till the sun disappeared behind the clouds, then headed back down.

We took another turn along the way and ended up in a neighborhood. We ran into the German tourist from before, and the three of us used Google Maps to find our way back to the train. We had a nice conversation - he'd been studying in Russia and was doing two weeks in Japan before returning to Munich. At Kyoto station, we said goodbye and found our luggage - easily this time. 

However, our SUICA cards were confused by our Fushimi Inari detour. Finally got that sorted out... then couldn't find the metro entry and my wifi was dead. I was so glad I'd basically memorized our Airbnb's location - we were able to finally find it - wet and exhausted, up five flights of stairs. We went back out for dinner, then crashed at our new place.