Utumin's Sugoi Adventures >o<~ 2

Saturday, July 24, 2010

You pray to foxes here...moe~
Our little visit to Kyoto~
Warning: Long ass post up ahead with lots of pictures



Kyoto, the previous capital of Japan. Filled with temples, mountains, and most importantly... school field trips filled with schoolgirls! HUUZZZAHHHH

The first thing we did when we arrived in Kyoto was go to this fox temple called Fushimi Inari-Taisha.

Shrines after staircase into shrine
You can wash your hands here...not sure about drinking
 Going further into it, you find these cool passages. In the pictures we saw before hand, there weren't those annoying red/white striped sticks everywhere... must be related to the construction at different parts of the temple. The creepy thing about these tunnels were that every time I walked through them, I could swear I heard the sounds of footsteps 2 feet behind me. However, every time I turned around, there was nothing there, my friend agreed with me too. I suspect it's probably because of echos due to the design of the tunnels, although I'd prefer to believe that there were fox spirits following us.

Ended up splitting into 2 paths...they go to the same place though
After the tunnels, you get deeper into the temple. There was this little section where you could write your wishes onto the fox heads. My friends and I were too cheap to buy them, lol...


Going even deeper into the temple, there are sections in the forest and partially on the mountains. There was a god-level amount of mosquitoes here. Within 5 minutes, my friends and I were bitten around 3 times so we quickly ditched. Here's a few more pictures of the temple.





Afterwards, we went to check in at our hotel. It was Japanese style, our whole room's floor was made of tatami mats, we had a tea-set, futons and yukata in the closet.

Us being cheesy with tea + timed camera
We took a bath in the nice communal bath and then went to Gion Matsuri. It is one of Japan's most famous festivals and lasts a whole month. There were many festival food stands and lots of cute girls in Yukata ~_~ I ate shaved ice, takoyaki and fried chicken. It was extremely chaotic and very tiring since you could never stop moving due to the torrent of human bodies.


There were a shitton of people

 

There were a lot of people and couples sitting alongside the river

The next day, we went straight to Kiyomizudera, a temple connected to the side of a mountain.
The entrance to the temple
View of the mountain off the temple side


You can wash your hands and drink this water
After Kiyomizudera, we decided to go to Ginkakuji. On the map, it looked really close, but it ended up taking us 1 hour in the hot blazing sun, with big backpacks and 4 bottles of drinks each to walk there from Kiyomizudera. We raged when we realized there was a bus that went directly there from the station while going back (it stopped at Kiyomizudera too).
The Philosopher's Path (Tetsugaku no Michi), the path to the temple
Cool trivia: The building that you capture Ho-Oh from in Pokemon is actually based on Ginkakuji. You can't really see it in my photo, but there's a small little metal looking bird/phoenix decoration on the top.
Dat building.


By the time we finished going though Ginkakuji, we were tired and went back to the shinkansen to go to our next destination. However, before leaving, we decided to buy 2 boxes of the local snacks called Yatsuhashi.
Aww yeahh

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4 comments

  1. Kyoto is always so nice and pretty. Btw, Fushimi Inari Taisha is the largest shrine network in all of Japan. ;o There's 32000 other Fushimi Inari Taisha shrines out there. And the cool passage way are lots and lots of torii.

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  2. oh dayum... e_e many fox spirits be hanging around these tunnels i guess

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  3. the tunnels look aweesome *u*

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  4. FOOOOOD.

    So lucky D: I wanna go to a festival too T.T

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