Kyoto Day Four - March 22nd

The first stop after eating breakfast was the Fushimi Inari Shrine. Which you reach by taking the JR Kobe line two stops. The shrine entrance is directly outside the station. This Shrine is open all the time and it is free. Dawn to Dusk are the normal hours that people visit. There was more Torii gates in this small area than I have ever seen combined. Each one was sponsored by someone, from the largest to the smallest. You could get a small one for 4000 Yen. The large amount of foxes can be attributed to them being the messengers of the Shinto god of rice Inari. There were many people running/hiking it is about a two hour loop to complete. After seeing pretty much half of the path we headed back to Kyoto.

We walked from JR Kyoto station to the Imperial Palace garden. That took around an hour with a pitstop at the Starbucks Concept store. The Sakura look like they are within a week of blooming. The plum trees were in bloom as you can see in the series of photos of people taking photos of flowers. We even got into the fun of it. It was pretty funny to see people with lens worth several thousands dollars taking pictures of flowers.

After walking back to the city hall area and getting lunch it was a quick walk through Gion. This area is the most famous area in Japan for Geisha. Our quick walk did not find any, but I do like to keep a steady pace. We then headed through the area we had walked through on Friday night.

The next stop on the fast walking tour was Heian Shrine. This shrine is made to look like the Imperial Palace of the Heian era. It was built in 1895 to celebrate the 1,100th anniversary of the time that Kyoto had become the capital of Japan. There were two very cool washing stations on the grounds. One I will say it looked like a cougar and the other a dragon.

From the Heian shrine we walked towards the Path of Philosophy. The path is next to a small river and is covered by various types of trees. At the head of the path is Ginkakuji (Silver Pavilion) which is not actually covered in silver. It was built as a complement to the Gold Temple on the other side of Kyoto. The funding never came together to make the outside silver. One reason may be that it is a 2 hour walk from Kyoto station. The grounds were very well kept and it was my first time to see a Zen pebble garden. The flan shaped object was about 4 feet high and 8 feet in diameter. We headed out to the hotel after that, it was a half hour walk to the subway station. For dinner we went back to the city hall arcade. I did some long shutter time shots with my camera near the station.

By rough estimate we walked 12 miles today. I will be feeling it tomorrow for sure. The shinkansen leaves at 1400 so we can get in a little more of Kyoto in the morning.

Kyoto Day 4 - March 22nd