My favorite sight in Kyoto was the Fushimi Inari-Taisha, which translates to “the Head Shrine of Inari”.

It consists of 10,000 Torii gates painted persimmon orange, spread out on & up a mountain:

With such a cool sounding Japanese name, I actually found the translation disappointing. I thus propose some alternate ones:

• Shrine of 10,000 Gates

or

• Shrine of 10,000 Persimmon Gates

or

• Shrine of 10,000 People Going Through 10,000 Persimmon Gates

Here’s a Disney-like queue to go the right way:

Up & up we go, as do the crowds:

Sloooooowwwwly progressing, oh hey a Geisha selfie!

Not many more things as frustrating as walking behind hoards of packs of teens:

I said “sumimasen!”

Starting to put the crowds behind me:

But you can never escape vending machines:

Celebrating that I escaped the crowds enough to take this:

Snow begins to appear as you go higher:

It really is beautiful, and going through all of the Torii makes it a very enjoyable, somewhat challenging hike:

Lots of temple areas areas throughout (including the one where I asked for forgiveness):

Found the Japanese Sisyphus – poor fella probably started this job as a teen:

Great view of Kyoto at one of the many “tops” – it really does just keep going & going. Loved it!