Thursday, June 1, 2017

Fushimi Inari Taisha

Today we visited the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto. This Shinto shrine is famous for its thousands of red wooden torii gates.
The gates cover a steep hill and as you climb higher and higher up its slopes, you walk through a dense network of wooden gates, with areas covered in smaller shrines featuring miniature gates

 
 
 
 Apart from the torii gates there are statues of foxes everywhere. Foxes are considered the messengers of Inari, the rice god this shrine is dedicated to.
We ended our trip with a visit to a tradtitional onsen, a wonderfully relaxing bathing facility with hot and cold baths, a sauna and an excellent restaurant! As it wasn't allowed to take pictures there, we end todays report with these pictures of a few young cats living at the Fushimi Inari shrine.