Fushimi Inari Taisha

So how Akira did things is that during the trip home or dinner the night before, or breakfast in the morning, he would ask me about my plans for the following/same day and suggest/help me with an itinerary of where to go for the day for an effective sightseeing route. Basically he suggested certain temple circuits (since that was one of the things I said I wanted to see/visit) and said that he would drop me off at the start of one of the circuits in the late morning or whenever I wanted to go, and pick me up from JR Kyoto Station in the evening. Today’s itinerary was going to include Fushimi Inari and Tofukuji in the south, and then Arashiyama in the west.

I never made it that far though. Despite being a tourist myself, I don’t like being around masses of other tourists, especially when they’re busy breaking all sorts of no-picture rules in sacred areas and taking 10 variation selfies of the same picture in slightly different angles as though trying to make up for shallowness with sheer quantity, and blocking other pedestrians as they do so. Virtually all the places that Akira would suggest over the three days were famous places, and at this point famous also equated to busy and I can only take so much of that at once. So I usually veer off course and end up somewhere else altogether, which is what happened today, tentative suggested schedule be damned.

For starters, although (or perhaps because) I had already taken the train to Inari Station and walked up to the shrine yesterday, so I was familiar with the route, he insisted on driving me practically to the front torii of the shrine today before dropping me off. This was to save time, but also kind of felt more like I was “experiencing” Kyoto from inside a tourist bus than getting to places on my own two feet, instead of making my own pilgrimage there. Due to this, I didn’t even enter Fushimi Inari through the main shrine gate today, like I did the day before. It didn’t feel right. Instead, I went around the side of it and into the temple.

This is the central temple altar area where one can donate 100 yen and request a blessing/make a wish. I was here yesterday for the night ceremony and could not see a thing — it’s much clearer during the day, naturally. The raised dais on the right was a sort of platform where people were seated on cushions and watching the ceremony from last night, I had not seen any temple with that structure up until this point (although I would see another a couple days later in Yasaka Shrine):

I made my donation, like I had for several other temples, but while I usually wished for the safety of my friends and family, or occasionally for myself too, this one didn’t feel right somehow. I was vaguely aware that Inari was the kami for agriculture, since the previous day’s rituals were related to that, but a lot of what I knew about this shrine was also influenced by the Inari Kon Kon anime, which portrays Fushimi Inari as a cute and somewhat clumsy “power of friendship” human character and includes a number of characters, including playful and whimsical fox familiars and other gods. My mental image of Fushimi Inari was one of a trickster character, what with all the foxes.

So with all that in my mind, my wish for Fushimi Inari was as follows:

“Hello Fushimi Inari. Please play a trick on me today. Nothing hurtful, please.”

Not thinking much of it, I then went off to get my goshuin from the front office — they only had sticker ones, which I’m not a fan of, but I understand, the front of the shrine is very popular. I picked up two, a double page one (which, like the Zenkōji one, I didn’t want to bend so I ended up not putting into my book), and a single page one, which I stuck in later that night thanks to Akira lending me some glue.

After this, I headed off behind the temple toward the famous line of torii arches that led up the trail toward the top of the mountain.

There were tons of tourists here, stopping every few minutes to take another selfie, as though random pictures like that means anything. I was getting quite annoyed by then. But there were also a couple of side paths leading off to the side, and I took one of them that led to a shrine visible from the main torii gate path.

Fancy. However, the path actually continued on past the path as well, deeper into the bamboo forest, and I noticed that although a number of people did veer off to the shrine, no one actually went along the path further than that, since it led away from the torii gate, I suppose. So I went down that path.

This path quickly gave way to a forest trail, as I followed it along dirt and grass and over tree roots. There was no real danger of getting lost — the path also had fences on both sides, and was completely linear except for a couple of places where it split into two.

From the minute I went past the little shrine though, I was completely by myself, and this part of the bamboo forest was both serene and majestic.

Well, besides the fences, there were obviously signs of life here and there, like an altar in the woods or that random motorcycle above, and now and then I heard like there was someone walking on some other nearby trail. Didn’t see anyone though.

Eventually, the path narrowed and became weird and overgrown, and ended at a six foot high cliff that went down to another path below at a 45 degree angle. Seriously what the heck. I didn’t take a picture of this but I did manage to shimmy down because the fence that I was following also led downwards at the 45 degree angle, so I held on to that as I inched down.

Regardless, at that point I had two ways to go, so I went left. On this path, I eventually met two tourists who were as surprised to see me as I was to see them, heading in the other direction, as well as a local or two eventually. There was also a sign at what I think was a 3-way split in the road, with one of the other two paths on the same elevation as the path I had arrived on, but which seemed to have a sign that indicated that it was closed, although the path looked open and accessible. The other path led to some stairs leading downwards to some building, but there was also a pole with a sign attached to it by string with a message that I interpreted as it saying that this path led to Fushimi Inari or its peak, that pointed in that direction, even though it was headed downwards. I noticed that the sign was flimsily attached and could be spun around the entire pole anyway so where it pointed was a little suspect, but I was fully invested in this adventure anyway and wasn’t going to ignore fate pointing me in that direction.

That building turned out to be a collection of little shrines and altars with dozens upon dozens of foxes.

I had no idea who it belonged to and still don’t. But I donated to and prayed at one of them anyway, specifically this one:

I also took this picture soon after that, and this one (弘法ヶ瀧) does at least appear on Google Maps as a mappable landmark:

Anyway, I continued wandering east from there, barely seeing anyone along the way. Lots of farmland and stuff though, I was obviously outside of shrine territory at this time, and walking through the countryside.

It’s worth noting at this point that ever since I started off along the random trail back on the Fushimi Inari path by myself, it felt like I was off on my adventure, and once I was past the little shrine above, I kept having this mental image of me walking along the road with two neon-blue fox ears and a neon blue tail, both made out of flickering fire, as I went along. It felt like I was walking along the path with some purpose, though I had no idea what as yet other than exploring the unknown.

The kami were still watching over me, as there was a random dead snake on the road in my path:

And a big crow watching me and cawing loudly from the top of a tree:

I eventually found a signboard near a school in the middle of nowhere, showing just how far I had gone off course. The red torii gates on the left were Fushimi Inari, and the red 現在地 sign in the middle right was where I currently was.

I also remember running across a woman sweeping the side of one of the roads in the middle of the countryside and wondering how she got there and why she was sweeping the quiet road. It was kind of near the school but not quite by it.