Eddie and I have an unspoken rule that you must be photographed with an "Ithaca is Gorges" t-shirt when visiting a foreign land. This is especially true when the foreign land does not have the best comprehension of the English language. "Ithaca is Gorges" is lost on people in the United States; try explaining it to a non-native English speaker (fun exercise). Below you'll find my obligatory "Ithaca is Gorges" t-shirt.
This picture was taken at the Fushimi-Inari shrine. The shrine is incredible, mainly because you don't know what you're getting into, and once you do, you're amazed that anyone would put so much work into it. You arrive by commuter train, walk through a small village, and then see a ton of temples. You'd think the fun would end there, amazed by temples built a thousand years ago. But no. Instead, I decide I'll take a walk through the woods. As I move further from the temples, I see some orange torii in the distance. I walk though them, taking tons of pictures, thinking they're very cool. As I keep walking, I realize that the torii don't end--they are now going up steps and seem interminable. I stop taking pictures, because at this point I'm concentrating on my health (keep in mind that it is 95+ degrees and 120% humid, and I'm walking uphill at 1pm). I keep walking for what seems forever, when I stumble upon an opening with a tea house and shop. Whew, I must have made it to the top. Nope. I'm now at the start of a loop--a loop that is about 5 or 6 kilometers long--that winds up the mountain. Walking up the loop, I see shrine after shrine on the side of the path (all still covered by torii, mind you) with graveyards to accompany each shrine. The top is about 4km from where I spotted the first torii in the distance in the woods. And this is just the beginning--I haven't talked about any of the weirdness that you encounter, such as the multitude of fox statues (who are there to dedicate the way to the god of cereal grains--yes, cereal grains) or the nifty drinking stations. I'm told that the shrine is featured in "Memoirs of a Geisha", but I've never seen it. I'm also told that some 3 million Japanese flock to the area over the 3 days that comprise the new year around Jan 1st.
Want to know more? I have a ton of additional pics to show when I get back.
Written at 8:37pm, Sunday August 26 in Kyoto.