I awoke at 7:00. I briefly considered getting “up and at ’em” and imagined arriving at Fushimi Inari by 8:30. Yesterday was a big day, though, and I was feeling a bit out of gas. Not like I needed a rest day, per se, but I needed… a slow day.

I stayed in bed, looking at Facebook and Instagram. At 8:15, I got up and did a full set of back stretches. Today would be another day with a lot of walking.

I took a bit of laptop time. Though I still had two full days in Kyoto, it was time to think about my departure home. I reviewed my transportation plan to the Tokyo airport and my meal options on the flight.

I again looked for breakfast options nearby, though I was aware by now that Japan doesn’t much do breakfast out.

At 10:00, I walked to a local cafe called Hoshino, with a breakfast menu on a sandwich board out front. Amusingly, the item that most appealed to me was called “eggslut”. I went in and found the interior warm, with wooden booths for 1 or 2 segmented by glass partitions.

After I’d ordered a coffee and the eggslut, I decided to look up what exactly this mistranslation was intended to indicate. It looked like an egg in a dish with a side of toast.

It turned out to be not a mistranslation at all, but a dish that originated in L.A. and consisted of an egg over pureed potatoes. As served to me this morning, the potatoes were almost certainly covered in a meat gravy. Oops. Such mishaps occur a handful of times per year. Though I’ve been a pescatarian for 26 years, I’m not so strict about not eating beef, pork, or poultry that I spit it out or refuse to eat anymore. The gravy was quite tasty. I shrugged and kept eating.

The coffee and eggslut together were less than $6 USD. I haven’t found Japan to particularly expensive but certainly cash-consuming! I would need to make a fourth and final ATM stop today.

From there, it was a couple blocks to the Gion-Shijo train station and an 8-minute train ride to Fushimi-Inari Station. Upon my arrival, I spotted two women on the other platform, wearing kimono and stylin’ and profilin’ while they were at it. I snapped a photo of them that I adore:

I would see many kimonos over the course of the afternoon. I got the sense that the appeal for locals is both honoring tradition *and* playing dress-up, i.e. a mix of reverence and fun.

It was a 7-minute walk from the station to the entrance of Fushimi Inari, with many food and souvenir shops along the way. I arrived at 12:00 and of course found the site massively crowded. Seems to be par for the course in Kyoto.

Fushimi Inari is a Shinto shrine renowned for its Senbon Torii, ~10,000 vermilion gates that straddle a hiking path up a mountain through a forest. There is no entrance fee, and it’s open every day of the year, 24 hours a day.

I spent a good half hour making my way from the street through the plaza, past the romon gate structure and the temizuya, to the beginning of the mountain path. I took photos of and observed men and women in kimonos, worshipers at the shrine buildings, and fox sculptures flanking the main entrance. Foxes are thought to be the messengers of Inari, the Shinto god of rice and prosperity (one’s fortune having come from good crops once upon a time).

The hiking trail begins with two parallel rows of dense torii gates; the gates thin out the higher up the mountain you go. I wasn’t sure if I was going to summit; knowing that many people turn around at the Yotsutsuji intersection, more or less the point halfway up, made continuing to the summit appealing.

It doesn’t matter which of the parallel paths you take as they both lead to the halfway point. Setting foot on either proved a challenge due to the bottleneck of people taking photos, myself included:

Once I got going, I stopped only if I had an extended shot of the gates in front of me with no people in sight. I took as many of those photos as I could, and otherwise, I hoofed it upward.

After about a half hour, I reached the halfway intersection and paused to enjoy the views over Kyoto, as well as sit down for a moment.. it was a muggy day and I was sweaty. The eggslut was not enough breakfast, and I was feeling hungry. I considered getting a soft serve here but decided a sugar bomb wasn’t exactly going to satiate me. Onward!

From the halfway point, the remainder of the trail to the summit is a circuit and you can go either direction. I went clockwise.

As I climbed, there were more people on the path to the summit than I’d hoped, but the crowds certainly thinned out, along with the gates.

I noticed I was incurring bug bites, which I hadn’t anticipated. In a mountain forest.. go figure.

I passed by and through multiple “stations” with drinks, snacks, shrines, and miniature torii gates.

All of the torii gates in the park, from the large ones along the trail to ones you can hold in your hand, are paid for and donated by a business, or sometimes individual, with the cost depending on the size of the gate. The date and donor’s name are written on the back in black paint and are thus visible on the walk back down the trails.

At 14:00, I summited! I walked up the steps to an altar of sorts and discovered paths leading around and behind it. I explored and found hundreds of numbered mini-shrines.

It suddenly occurred to me that there might be a geocache hidden among these shrines. I checked the app, and sure enough, mini-shrine 124 holds a small container in its rocks. I searched and hit a dead-end. While the shrines were mostly in numerical order, they also skipped around when the paths turned corners. I kept moving back and forth between 118 and 132 and just not seeing where I was supposed to go to find 124.

And then I did:

Sneaky downhill/behind path! Lo and behold, mini-shrine 124 and its hidden treasure:

I was so glad that I’d thought to look in the app and that I had pocket wi-fi. Finding this cache was one of my favorite moments of the whole trip ☺️

After 45 minutes at the summit, I spent another 45 on the descent. By the time I reached the plaza at 15:30, I was very hungry.

I visited the ATM at Bank of Kyoto. I had withdrawn ¥10,000 at each of my previous 3 ATM stops. This time, I took out only ¥4,000, or about $37 USD, for the remainder of today, tomorrow, and my travel day.

On Google Maps, I’d found a nearby udon joint named Omiya but instead inadvertently walked into the place next door, called 伏見庵, or Fushimi-an. It was small and quiet and also served udon. I ordered Inaka: noodles with grated radish, seaweed, vegetables, bonito flakes, and an egg. So good!

While riding the train back to Gion-Shijo, I looked up Kiyomizu-dera, which will be one of my final stops tomorrow.

I walked back to my listing and rested, which meant going through photos and deleting bad ones and duplicates.

For dinner, I decided I wanted yakisoba noodles (I really can’t get enough of noodles). I looked up a nearby okonomiyaki joint called Nishiki Warai. All the tables have grills. Apparently, some places like this bring you the ingredients and leave you to cook your own dinner. Here, the finished dish is served onto the griddle to garnish as you will and eat away.

I walked about 10 minutes from my listing and was seated right away. I asked for and received a menu in “Eigo”. I ordered veggie yakisoba, and the server turned on my grill.

I didn’t wait long before the yakisoba was served onto the grill. As with the okonomiyaki in Osaka, I used the steel spatula to cut and serve the food from the grill onto my plate. It was tasty, though a bit greasy and not plentiful enough. I would still be hungry when I returned to the listing.

On the way back to the listing, I looked up more geocaches. There was one I wanted to find as it sounded like it was probably in a pub, maybe an English one as the name was Man in the Moon. As it turns out, it’s Irish and I found the cache! There is a wall hanging plaque of 9 steins in a 3 x 3 formation, and the cache is hidden in the center stein.

I was in the mood for a beer, but the place was small and mostly taken up by the loud voices and cigarette smoke of a party of 3 at a table in the front. I looked up somewhere else I might get a beer and struck out. I haven’t been drinking much beer at all over the last couple years, and I was amused that my interest was reignited in Japan, of all places.

Back at the listing, I continued with photo deletion, logged money transactions, and made five posts on Instagram (from way back in Tokyo).

At midnight, I put another long day of adventure to rest.