This has been an exhausting week, and I'm not going to write much - I'll let the pictures tell the story with some minimal narration. Spent more time on the pics than I would spend writing anyway. :P
Here we are at the entrance to the shrine complex.
Inari shrines have something to do with foxes. I have long known this in a vague sense, and my Japanese friends weren't able to shed any more light on it, so I'll just leave it at that for now. There were lots of fox statues here, and they even had fox-shaped charms for sale. I do know that foxes, like tanuki, are reputed to have magical powers, and I think in Japanese mythology they have been known to shapeshift and deceive people.
Fushimi Inari Taisha is a really big, commercially successful shrine. These wooden plaques have people's wishes written on them. That's standard at any shrine or temple, but here there were an incredible number of them. In addition to ordinary people, many business owners come here as well, giving huge amounts of money to the shrine in exchange for blessings and good luck.
At last we arrived at the entrance to the path Fushimi Inari is famous for. This walking path winds around and up the mountain, allegedly covered by 1000 torii gates. None of us felt like counting, though...
Towards dusk, it can get kind of dark and spooky.
Halfway up the mountain, there was a nice lookout point where we could behold the wonderful ugliness of Japan from above.
The top of the mountain was covered with vast stone fields of torii leading to more torii, with hundreds and hundreds of little wooden torii scattered around for some reason. Again, our Japanese guides could do little to shed light on what the meaning of all these little gates could be.
Ok, I really need to go to sleep now... But here's one last picture - sometimes when I'm photoshopping, I get sidetracked... :)
4 comments:
I've been there too, and I think somebody explained something to me about the fox connection, but it's all very hazy.
I know that Foxes supposedly love Inari-zushi.
First time you have come there ?
It is beautiful place :D
Did you see the Horse Shrine ?
Yeah, I did see the horse shrine, but I wasn't sure what to make of it. I've seen two other horse shrines in Japan - one was on Kompira-san in Shikoku, which is a similar sort of holy mountain with long stone staircases winding their way up it (no endless tunnel of torii though). That was also a shrine with a wooden horse in it. The other was the horse shrine in Ise-jingu, which had a live horse.
Do you know what the significance of the horse is?
I was there with Kern, and he probably remembers me reciting from the tour book.
I remember it being a lovely place for exploring and spending an afternoon with a good friend. Not to mention a mild warm up to Fuji-san, eh Kern?
Last week I saw a music video by Madonna set at Inari. It was annoying. I was annoyed.
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