Toji temple, Inari shrine

Today I rented a bike from my hostel and zoomed off to Toji temple which was only about twenty minutes away from the hostel! It was really peaceful, there weren't many tourists at all which made it quite atmospheric.

After that I made my way to Fushimi inari-taisha shrine. I followed the main trail for a bit before decided to veer off to another shrine and then follow a sign which directed me towards the top of the mountain.

On the way, I saw a couple of smaller shrines, including one where a naked Buddhist priest was chanting in a waterfall, and a wood-workshop which was also by a waterfall. I decided to check it out and met a very nice man who gave me a small history lesson about the shrine. The shrine is flagged by two foxes, a male, and a female, the male's mouth is open to represent the first sounds in Japanese 'a, i, o, e, u', and the female's mouth is closed to represent the last sound, 'n', meaning from the beginning to the end. The reason that they're foxes is because the mice eat rice and the foxes eat the mice and I've forgotten the exact meaning for this. The shrine and foxes are supposed to give good luck in business which is why on the back of all the gates are various business's names and slogans. He also gave me some water on my way!

My descent from the top of the mountain - many gates

People's wishes are hung up at the shrine

I got to the top of the mountain, followed another path with a nice view and then kept going, vaguely following the person in front of me and proceeded to go into a quiet residential area with no sign of the main shrine whatsoever.

View from the top of the mountain

Luckily, the person I'd been following had google maps so we managed to make our way back without too much difficulty and then I decided to have a bit a food, including a soy sauce ice cream which didn't taste as soy saucy as I'd hoped it would.

The not-so-saucy soy sauce icecream

After that, I made my way back to the hostel for a shower and met another person staying in the same hostel and we headed out together to look at Gion for a bit and then wondered around looking for anywhere that would cater for two vegetarians. As we were both on the edge of defeat we came across a random restaurant with fake vegetables outside and took it as a sign, which it was! There were lots of options to choose from for us and everything was delicious! A good end to the busy day!

The light shining in the darkness

2017年9月9日