Post card from / Kyoto part 2

Fushimi Inari

Remember Memoirs of a Geisha? If you haven't watched it – you should watch it. I've been a fan of Japanese culture like since forever, from manga, anime, to geisha – all those cultural related stuff. I love it. Everything is so well put together, meaningful, neat, like everything has its own purpose.

There's a scene in the movie where Chiyo – running through these orange gates, ever since then I wanna do the same thing. I wanna run! And so I did. These orange gates can be seen at Fushimi Inari Shrine. How to get there? Very easy. Just take taxi – LOL (but taxi in Kyoto is much cheaper compared to Tokyo). There's a  JR station at Fushimi Inari, so it's so easy to find it. 

There are 2 gates, make sure you go to main one – there's a big gate, some modern building and you will arrive to the temple, then you can find the big map. You can see where you should go, lots of stairs and then you will find those 'smaller, tighter' orange gates where Chiyo run passed by.

People will stop to take pictures, but trust me – it will be impossible to take pictures at the first gates. Travel tips: Don't bother to try. It will be kinda dark because the gates are short and tighter, kinda hard for the lights to get in. Just walk (along with hundreds other people), walk again you will find the first 'basecamp', i think there was another mini temple – and another gate! Bigger, and taller. Much more space, the road starts to incline. A bit of a hike, but from now on.. You can try to take pictures. Do not worry, if you walk along the way, you will find more gates, and more empty spaces to take picture

See? Clear, empty, spaces for you to take pics

 See all the kanji writing on the gates? It's all on the backside of the gate, so if you are walking towards the gate (to hike up up up) you will not see any markings. Those markings are meant for people/companies who have donated throughout the times to the shrine (both money or even rice)

I didn't take the pic of the map, but here it is;

Start from those blue arrows at the bottom – we walk to the right and see the double gates (left side for people who wanna go back to the main entrance, right side for you to walk right up!). Basically I managed to walk all the way San No Mine (two stops before the peak- Mt Inari), honestly if I were with Rhein and we started hike in the morning, I would go there and hike to the top of Mt Inari and finish all the gates. But since, I was with my family, I wore a dress & sandals, not proper sport shoes – it was raining, I didn't manage to hike and finish. Because after my last place, the stairs were pretty steep, it was like serious hiking with stairs. It was quite dark, honestly quite scary.

But! I would definitely go back there again and try to finish everything... Hopefully I will come back soon! Let me know on the comment section if you've finished walking through all the gates! See you on the next #postcardfrom post!

Below is the full ootd pic of what I wore that day :) 

Dress OUR SECOND NATURE // Bag CULT GAIA // Sandals BIRKENSTOCKS // Hat H&M