Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine

In Kyoto, there’s a shrine that’s super popular, open 24 hours and free. It’s popular thanks to its many tori. Chances are high you’ve come across photos of famous instagrammers in front of the famed red gates (tori) before.

Nothing wrong with that but it does make Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine rather crowded.

If you take the traditional route to get to the top of the mountain, be prepared to not be able to really enjoy the tori as you’ll just be a human canned sardine walking side by side another human canned sardine.

Since I was already tired to begin with, I can’t tell you how fed up I was to see way too many people at this shrine.

The crowd and congestion was so bad that my travel companion and I decided to take a break, away from the many people in the middle of it all.

The break was much needed and in the process, I got to see a beautiful bride and groom. The happy couple must have had some sentimental connection with this shrine because I honestly don’t know how they could tolerate a photography session amongst the craziness of many tourists. (A part of me thinks they’re super extroverted as they didn’t seem bothered by people passing by and looking at them.) They looked like super nice people and although I don’t know them personally, I hope their relationship is super sweet.

After the break and braving the crazy crowd again, we opted to take the nontraditional route. The nontraditional route was great as hardly anyone was on this path but I don’t recommend you to take it if:

• You’re traveling solo.
• You’re not comfortable with hiking. (It wasn’t hard but I was with someone that had a good sense of where to go when it comes to hiking.)
• You’re visiting when it’s almost dark.

On this path, my travel companion and I experienced something somewhat creepy. There was a sign to visit Oiwa Okami (optional) before continuing to the top of the shrine. I was tired, but guess what we decided to do? We decided to go on a little detour. A somewhat nice decision as there was a place to sit and a view from atop. Everything was basically nice until my travel companion saw hair left on a “table”. It was really strange and it obviously irked us out a bit. I unfortunately don’t have photos to share since I decided it might be better to just not take pictures. It was an unexpected experience, though.

If anyone can educate me on what cut hair that was somewhat wrapped /tied doing as an “offering” at a shrine, I’d appreciate it. I am stumped and only have random assumptions about it.

Anyway, the detour to Oiwa Okami was somewhat of a waste of time in that we had to backtrack our steps to the beginning of the detour and then hike again but this time to the top of Mount Inari. Can we say tiring?

The so called 10 minutes it’d take to get to the top of the mountain felt longer than 10 minutes. Relief washed over me once we got to the top of Mount Inari. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel the same level of excitement or sense of achievement as when I was hiking on Miyajima Island.

I also was quite hungry during my hike. The only thing I had prior to the hike was tofu which I found to be unsatisfactory.

Unsatisfactory as the portion size wasn’t big, but that’s to be expected in Japan. The most unsatisfactory thing was how the vendor had sprinkled bonito flakes all over my tofu, though. With Fushimi Inari Shrine being a super touristy place, I think it’s possible for obvious foreigners to request vendors to make food a certain way, provided that the vendor understands your request. As for my situation, I saw tofu and thought I’d be safe. The bonito stuff was unseen to me beforehand as it was behind the vendor! It was basically too late for me to say no when she garnished my tofu as the finishing touch. (I just did my best to remove all of the flakes so that I could actually consume the tofu. Wasteful, but not as wasteful as tossing it all away, if you know what I mean. I still couldn’t help but to cringe while eating my tofu, though.)

In addition to the fish skin flakes, I wasn’t too thrilled with the aesthetics of how the sticks were placed on my tofu but perhaps that’s just me being extra particular for no reason.

Throughout the hike, I took a lot of photos of signs thanks to my subconscious fear that we might get lost within the forest. I felt the photos could come in handy if we needed to backtrack our steps amongst the bamboo and whatnot. I of course realize it was probably more for my own sake as I doubt my travel companion would ever get lost in a forest.

Thank goodness that we never needed to make use of my many photos of signs! Lol

All in all, my trip was okay. I think I would have enjoyed the visit a lot more if I was well rested prior to the hike, wasn’t so pressed for time and if it wasn’t so crowded.

I recommend anyone interested in visiting Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine to come super early. Since the shrine grounds are open 24 hours, 6 am is doable. If you’re an Instagram model, you can take as many perfect photos as you need to. If you’re not into Instagram, you’ll have the shrine and forest all to yourself, save for the cat (and other animals) that calls the shrine it’s home.

Anyway, here are some additional photos I took of Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine. Enjoy!

A fox statue and fox paw charms.