Kyoto Day 3 - Up the mountain and back again

Today was an ambitious one. Being our last day in Kyoto, we had a few things to check off our list before we leave on Saturday. A quiet visit to Fushimi Inari Taisha, an area of Kyoto with old-style shops and buildings called Gion where the famous Hanamikoji street is, and the Sanjusangendo temple, which houses 1001 Kannon statues along with a 1000 year old, 11 foot tall Buddha statue.

Despite all of this, I still got out at 5 for a run this morning, and ran up and down the trails along the Kamogawa, one of the two large rivers that run through Kyoto. I came back and cleaned up, then we headed back to the Inari shrine we visited yesterday to experience it without thousands of foreign tourists. It was much, MUCH better early morning.

There were still other visitors to the shrine, but no tour groups and other than a single Instagram/OnlyFans girl with a tripod doing her very own photoshoot complete with glamour shot in the middle of the torii walk, the other visitors were well behaved and respectful. We took the opportunity to hike up the entire mountain and see all of the memorial stones, gates, and nature.

Going up the mountain

And up....and up...the 7000 stairs...

Along the way, we saw some of the shrine's guardians

I thought Inari were guarded by foxes...

Nothing is blasphemous if you are a cat...

The shrine is built into the side of a mountain, and there are numerous gravesites, smaller shrines, and many more torii leading up to the top of the mountain. One of the most common tropes in cheap kung fu movies is the apprentice training up in the mountains and bathing in a freezing waterfall to reach enlightenment or just straight up sadism or whatever. There are several "kung-fu training showers"™ up here that are actually used by those who live up here (a.k.a. shinto priests)

Dragon shower head

Can you imagine how cold this must be?

As we came back down the mountain we saw the bellweather for the tourist groups arriving: students. We made it back down and wove our way through the babbling throngs that were descending on the once-peaceful shrine and escaped just in time. Before moving on, I would like to share some signage that we saw getting to and walking through the shrine.

The honesty...

I want this at every construction site!

Translation: NO ONE poops on the sacred mountain!

After leaving the shrine area, we hopped a train up to Gion to take a look at Hanamikoji Street. On the way there we were sidetracked by a candy shop that has live demonstrations of them making their candy. We watched these two women work for the better part of 30 minutes (or more) as stretched, cut and molded the candy.

The massive hook on the wall is flipped upside down when she's
done stretching the candy

As far as Hanamikoji Street, it's a cool street with a bunch of restaurants in old fashioned buildings that we wouldn't be able to eat in (fish and/or dress code). I think it would be quite a nightlife spot for those with money. At noon for a couple of cheap slobs that have been hiking up a mountain, it wasn't all that inviting.

The lunch place we really wanted to try was an udon and tempura shop that advertised vegan udon with veggie tempura that looked amazing. We walked there only to find a "On Holiday" sign in the window. All of our hopes and dreams dashed, we trudged off down the street in search of the Ichiran location nearby to drown our sorrows in garlic and ramen. Right before we got there however, Sumi spied, while looking at the "Sanrio Goods 3F!!" sign at the local Don Quixote (nickname "Donki" weird all-in-one shopping that has everything from groceries to, well, Sanrio goods), a sukiyaki and shabu shabu restaurant on the 7th flood of Donki. Usually the higher up. your go, the more expensive things get. But we're talking an upscale Wal-Mart here, so we took a chance and headed upstairs.

It was a 1-hour all-you-can-eat place, which is fairly common in Japan. Also common is Japan is there is a surcharge if you don't eat what you take from the buffet. We chose the domestic beef (as opposed to imported (Chinese) beef) sukiyaki lunch and it was very good. The broth, a mix of soy sauce, sesame, and sugar, was fairly thick and flavorful and was excellent with the fresh green and white onions. The meat was obviously high quality and tasted better than any sukiyaki we've had in the States. 

After stuffing ourselves with sukiyaki and excellent yuzu ice cream, we walked about a mile down to Sanjusangendo temple. The temple has, as mentioned at the top, 1001 individual, unique Kannon statues, detailed statues of many of the important figures in Buddhist scripture, and a large central Buddha all housed in a single building that was constructed in 1164. A fire destroyed all but 124 of the statues in 1249. The rest were recreated over the next hundred years. I could go on and on about the construction and so on, but I won't bore anyone here. They are impressive, as is the large 11-foot Buddha in the center of the very large room that houses all of them. Carved from cypress, lacquered, gilded in gold, and polished crystal used for eyes, they are amazingly detailed and well crafted, especially considering they were made 1000 years ago.

We were not allowed to take pictures in the hall, but there are some images online that I am sharing here to try and give a sense of what it was like. I would definitely recommend this to anyone that visits Kyoto.

After almost 9 hours on our feet, we were done for the day and headed back to the hostel to do laundry and get ready to leave tomorrow for Shin-Osaka, where we will ride the fabled, pink, Hello Kitty shinkansen. I will leave you with a few pictures of Japan being Japan.

Guess what this is? No, seriously*

"What should I call my shop that sells art supplies? Ooh, I know!"

* It is a place to bet on horse races.