Frank and Zappa's Garden

When I was researching places to visit in Japan, and specifically Kyoto, Fushimi Inari Shrine was one of the first places that caught my eye. The colourful photos stood out, and it sounded so unique. It ended up being my favourite location of the day.

From http://www.japan-guide.com:

“Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷大社, Fushimi Inari Taisha) is an important Shinto shrine in southern Kyoto. It is famous for its thousands of vermilion torii gates, which straddle a network of trails behind its main buildings. The trails lead into the wooded forest of the sacred Mount Inari, which stands at 233 meters and belongs to the shrine grounds.

Fushimi Inari is the most important of several thousands of shrines dedicated to Inari, the Shinto god of rice. Foxes are thought to be Inari’s messengers, resulting in many fox statues across the shrine grounds. Fushimi Inari Shrine has ancient origins, predating the capital’s move to Kyoto in 794.”

We took a bus from Nijo Castle to Kyoto Station, and from there a local train to Inari. The guide books described the shrine as being a 5 minute walk from the station; beyond that we were not quite sure how to find it.

Turns out it would be hard to miss; we walked out the door of the station and saw the entrance directly across the street.

Obviously a popular destination, as there were many other visitors exploring and taking photos. We took our time approaching, but I’d say the ‘five minute walk from Inari Station’  description is a generous estimate.

I also think this was the warmest spot we were in all day, which made it that much more enjoyable.

Through that gate, there are fox statues on either side of the stairs.

Up another set of stairs…

We came to the first set of tori gates.

The gates are grouped in sections. At the top of this one, there is a double set of gates. There were actually quite a few people around, but we hung back and waited, and eventually there was a lull where there was only the one man who was working just inside one set of gates.

We took the left hand gate up.

It was uphill, but a fairly gentle incline. We came out to a shrine area.

As I’ve said, there were people around, and we were basically only a few minutes from the train station, but we were in the woods and it was very peaceful. I didn’t want to leave.

This is the entrance to the next set of gates.

At this point, I felt like I could keep walking for a good long time and would have liked to go a bit further, but Cory was getting tired of walking. It was almost 4:30 in the afternoon by this time, and we’d been walking around all day, so we decided to head back.

Looking down on the way we had come; we took the other trail on the way back down.

A view from the outside.

Headed back down toward town.

We wandered around a bit instead of heading directly back to the station. There were little touristy shops right below the entrance, and then other shops, etc, once we got to the narrow streets of town.

And here is where I wish I had written these posts sooner after getting home. I know this was my favourite place this day. Mostly because of the trails through the woods, with the tori gates, but I know I enjoyed walking around the town too and at this point I can’t really remember details. I  suppose it blurs together with similar walks through other areas.

I do definitely remember our stop here for these little pastries – they tasted like pancakes with vanilla custard filling. They were warm and delicious.

It was getting chilly again by this point, and we saw more snow flurries as we headed back to the station.

While I had been raring to go, to explore further through the walking trails of Fushimi Inari Shrine, by the time we took the train back to Kyoto Station, and a bus back to our hotel, I was exhausted. And then we started the ‘what to do for dinner’ all over again.

This was when we took our second walk through Cupola Sanjo.

There were plenty of restaurants around, but trying to figure out where to go when you can’t read the signs and you are tired and you just want somewhere comfortable to sit down and relax is not easy.

I wanted a salad. Our lunch, in the hole-in-the-wall restaurant near the Imperial Palace Garden had been tasty, but definitely a a little on the greasy side. I felt like I needed some vegetable matter.

We ended up going to Asahi, the restaurant I had noticed the night before, that I had thought looked so inviting. Asahi is a Japanese brewery and, as it turns out, they make excellent beer. The waitress did not speak much English, and the menus were in  Japanese, but they had pictures; we ordered everything, including the  beer, by pointing at pictures.

We did indeed have a salad, and an excellent salad it was. And I had pizza. It seemed a little bit wrong to be in Japan, having pizza and beer for  dinner, but it was so good that I really couldn’t feel bad about it.

Asahi was almost right across the street from our hotel, so we ended up going back here the next two nights. We had a different salad each night, though the one we had the first night ended up being my favourite. After a full day of walking around, seeing the sites, we would top it off with dinner and excellent beer, and then I would fall asleep almost as soon as we got back to the hotel. It was pretty perfect. 🙂

After lunch near Kyoto Imperial Palace Park, Cory and I caught another bus and went to Nijo Castle.

Walking through the gate - there's a moat!

The gate, from the inside

Our first stop: Ninomaru Palace

The above photo is the entrance/exit of Ninomaru Palace. You are not allowed to take pictures inside, and you have to take your shoes off in the entry way. They had slippers  you could wear to walk around inside – they came in medium (too big for me) and large (too small for Cory). It was actually quite chilly inside as well – pretty much the same temperature as it was outside.

The features of Ninomaru Palace are the wall paintings and the floors. Most of the rooms were empty, though there was usually a plaque describing what the room would have been used for. All of the rooms have the original paintings on the walls and sliding doors. Some of the rooms had scenes set up with mannequins  in period costumes as well.

The corridors that we were walking through (shuffling, really, in our ill-fitting slippers) have what they call  ‘nightingale floors.’ The idea being that no matter how softly a person treads, the floors squeak, so it would be impossible for an assassin to sneak up on the occupants of the castle. At first I wasn’t sure if I was actually hearing the floors – I had to ask Cory if that was what I was hearing – because it really did sound like birds singing outside.

After the palace, we went to the garden.

Even for March, it was impressive.

It was still quite cold out at this point, and there were snow flurries off and on. We were happy that we could operate our cameras while wearing gloves so at least our hands were warm.

There was a rest area with restrooms and vending machines (of course) and a place where we could sit down and rest our feet. It was still outdoors, so it wasn’t exactly warm, but it was out of the wind.

Then we continued  on and climbed to the top of these stairs, which was a nice high vantage point, but it was also windy and cold.

And this pretty much illustrates what the weather was like – it would start snowing…

…and then a few minutes later it would be bright and clear.

And it just kept flipping back and forth.

Back down at ground level, we continued on to the plum tree garden. People have asked us about how the cherry blossoms smelled, and I don’t remember smelling them at all. Anywhere that we encountered plum trees though, we smelled them – usually before we could even see them – and it was a really lovely fragrance.

After the plum trees, we decided it was time to move on to our last destination for the day, and we headed back to the bus stop.

View of street outside Nijo Castle in Kyoto

During our walk around Kyoto the first night, we did manage to find a little tourist information office. There we bought bus passes for the Kyoto city bus system, and picked up a map that had the bus routes to all the tourist sites. Between the bus passes and the JR passes, we could get to just about anywhere that we wanted to go in Kyoto. We planned to see as much as we could the next day.

Monday, March 12

I actually slept until after 8 am for the first time since arriving in Japan, and woke up feeling pretty normal. We went down to the hotel restaurant for the breakfast buffet and had our meal while poring over bus routes and our Lonely Planet guide to Kyoto. Plan set, breakfast eaten, we set off to find our bus stop. First on the itinerary – Kyoto Imperial Palace.

It did take us a little bit of time to figure out where we needed to be – and by we I mean Cory who kept a firm grip on the map, poring over it and muttering to himself; most of the time I was following along not knowing where we were going – but it really didn’t take too long to find the right bus stop, then we had to wait. It was chilly, but not too bad in the sun, as we stood and waited for the bus with local Kyoto-ites (Kyotans? no idea).

The bus was nice and warm, though the seats were small – not so bad for me, but definitely a tight fit for Cory. We didn’t have a terribly long ride though, so it was not bad.

The young man at the tourist office had pointed out Kyoto Imperial Palace Park on the map and said there were two entrances we could go in. The park is quite large and our informant had not recommended one entrance over the other, so we picked one and went for it. Of course it turned out to be the wrong one, and on top of that we went in the exact wrong direction when we got into the park. So we didn’t make it to the palace this day, instead we had a wander around the park.

In warmer weather, I can see that this park would be a lovely place to spend some time. This time of year, on a chilly day, it was pretty quiet. We did see a few people walking or biking through, and a group of people walking their dogs. Small dogs – all the dogs we saw in Japan were small, which makes sense where most people living in a city don’t have much space.

Inside the gate where we entered

Closer view of the gate

There were signs through out the park giving the location and describing historical significance

Sign describing where we came in

It is a beautifully laid out park, with wide gravelled walk ways and benches. I very much enjoyed walking around and would love to see it a little later in the year when everything has come to life. At the same time, it was nice to have it almost to ourselves, chilly though it might have been (there were actually a few snow flurries while we were there).

We did see some palace walls and gates from the outside.

Eventually we did find the main entrance. We took a little break there – restrooms and water from the vending machines, sat down at a table under the trees, then went to the office and bought tickets for an English tour on Wednesday morning.

Sign near the office - Cory said it looks like an 'Aliens Crossing' sign.

Then we went and wandered around a bit outside the park, looking for a place to have lunch. Going by the pictures/plastic food/descriptions displayed outside, we chose what turned out to be quite the dingy hole in the wall on the inside. It was a place that has obviously been around for a long time, it was quite cluttered and crowded, but it was clean and the food was tasty. We ordered one of their ‘set’ lunches, which started with a soup (by taste we identified it as a corn chowder, it was blended to be all smooth and creamy and was quite delicious); then the main was a piece of fish and a prawn, both battered and deep fried, a potato croquet, salad and rice. I couldn’t eat it all, but it was good.

After lunch, we were off to catch a bus to Nijo Palace.