First full day in Kyoto: May 1

 On our first morning in Kyoto we woke up early to get to Fushimi Inari-taisha, despite our early arrival it was packed with people. Some parts were made as early as 711, but it is constantly being added to. Fushimi Inari-taisha is known for its long torii gate path of around 10,000 gates. It is a shrine to the Shinto god Inari, who represents rice, agriculture, industry, fertility, and foxes are its messengers. Inari is seen as the patron of merchants, so businesses donate to the shrine to add a torii gate to the path, with small gates costing ¥400,00/$3,500 and big ones costing ¥1,000,000/$9,00. The walk through the gate path and up the mountain was a beautiful experience, and the views were great. At the top of the mountain there was a cat cleaning itself on top of a torii gate and as amusing as that was itself, seeing everyone else being amused was entertaining too.




    Then we worked our way down the mountain and had some lunch nearby. We took a train back to Kyoto station and walked over to Toji temple. Toji temple was built in 796 and is now a UNESCO heritage site. It has a five story pagoda that is the tallest wooden tower in Japan. It's almost never open to the public on the inside, but we got to walk around the base level of the pagoda. I'm assuming we got to go inside because it was the golden week of holidays, but I'm not sure. Here are some pictures of the temple, pagoda, and garden.



    After that we headed to the massive Kiyomizu-dera (pure water monastery) Buddhist temple. Kiyomizu-dera is known for its great views and the fact that it was built without a single nail, it is also a UNESCO heritage site. There was a myth that if you jump off stage and survive your wish would be granted, but that was prohibited in 1872 because only 85% survived. The temple was really busy when we went there because of the holidays.



    Once we had taken enough pictures we headed over to Heian shrine, which was much less popular, but still had some sort of festival going on outside. This site isn't nearly as unique as the other spots we visited today, but it had an interesting style. All the gravel was white, and the inside was almost completely empty.

    After that we took a bus to the Kyoto Gyoen National Garden, where the Kyoto Imperial Palace is located, but of course, it was completely closed off. It was pretty cool to see this massive space almost entirely devoid of people compared to some of the other places we had been that day.

    Then we took a bus back to the neighborhood of Gion to a small street known for its food called Pontocho alley. But the same issue we had before popped up as every restaurant was either really expensive or completely booked. So we went to a nearby japanese bbq spot that was further away from those wealthy areas. Nothing was in english and it was difficult to communicate with our hosts, but they sent in the resident english expert who was a great help to us in our incompetence. We got a variety of cuts of chicken and vegetables and cooked it up ourselves and it was very tasty. We finished our meal and I headed home, while my dad found a nearby brewery.

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