Entrance of Daitoku-ji (大徳寺)
however, all the small temples or gardens were not open to public yet. think they only operate at 9am. and i was there like 7.30am?? hahaha... so i was too early. but it was nice....check out the photos... i saw people walking their dogs and some ojisans there for morning stroll.
Stone pathway in the temple premises
Buddha stautes
Red maple & blue skies
Morning Dew on the pine needles
Entrance to 1 of the temples in Daitoku-ji
Sand patterns
After my morning walk, i headed back to the guesthouse. My sister and Hilda were awake by then and they were muching on their onigiri. I've not have my breakfast yet. After keeping our stuffs, we headed down to the common room to discuss where we were heading today and the timing of the trains to take back to Osaka.
Guesthouse Bon
Just nice, the guesthouse owner, Mr Taniguchi came and we paid him the money for our 1 night stay there. after that we took the bus back to Kyoto station and from there took a train to Fushimi Inari station. This will be our 1st time visiting Fushimi Inari shrine Taisha (伏見稲荷大社). Maybe the name is unfamiliar to us... but when u look at the pictures, the it will be "Oh! that place! I think i know it!" This shrine is famous for its thousands of red torii gates. and for some who have watched 'Memoirs of Geisha', will know the scene when Sayuri ran through the rows of red torii gates from child to adult. yeah... this was the place where 'Memoirs of Geisha' was filmed. ok... enough of that.
Red Torii gates
The shrine sits at the base of a mountain also named Inari, and includes trails up the mountain to many smaller shrines. Since in early Japan Inari was seen as the patron of business, each of the Torii is donated by a Japanese business. First and foremost though, Inari is the god of rice. and u'll see a number of fox statues at the gates/entrances of the shrine.
Fox statue
They are regarded as the messengers, are often found in Inari shrines. One attribute is a key (for the rice granary) in their mouths. Unlike most Shinto shrines, Fushimi Inari Taisha, in keeping with typical Inari shrines, has an open view of the main idol object (a mirror).
After snapping a couple of pictures, Hilda decided to give a pass for the rest of the gates... whilst my sister decided to walk a little more. and after the 1st segment of the large gates, was the segments of small gates followed by medium sized gates etc. if 1 were to walk the entire area... may take up to 3hrs... but because Hilda was waiting for us, we decided to stop at the 3rd segment and head back to base ground. =D
its a nice walk i must say.... but with the torii gates placed so close to one another, the pathway is a little dark even though it was broad daylight. i cannot imagine walking that path in the evening or at night... it will be too spooky. hahahaha....
wordings on the gates
rows of steps & gates
Information of the gates
anyway after the walk, we went back to the town area searching for food. coz it was close to lunch time. we happent to come across a shop tat was selling set meals... and everything was in japanese... but luckily it displayed the meals that the shop sells. and pricing was resonable. all 3 of us had the sea eel meal set. i thought it was unagi, but the shop lady kept insisting that it was sea eel... ok so we kept saying its sea eel... and i must say it was really nice. and in that shop, there were no foreigners besides us! hahaha....
me & my bowls of kitsune udon & sea eel don buri
This was taken along our way to the train station
after lunch we headed back to Osaka.
Coz it will be Hilda's last night in Osaka. Coz tomorrow she will heading to Hiroshima for a little while before boarding the plane to Singapore. Whilst me & my sister will be heading to Shikoku. Can't wait for tomorrow to come! coz it will be a new place that we're going to explore!
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