I’m at home now, and it’s 730am and I’m sick and tired and I have a cat sitting on me. My goal is to upload the rest of my photos today so they are off my list of things to do…hopefully the trip reporting is still ok.

After leaving that other temple, we decided we wanted to try to get to Mt. Inari for the sunset. The sun was going down faster than we could walk, so we caught a cab to the base of the mountain. We quickly hoofed it up…

There are more Shinto gates on this hike than in the rest of the country combined…(not a real statistic).

About a quarter of the way up the mountain we celebrated and stopped to take some photos. The sun was going down on the other side of a hill that was in our way, so we quickly took our photos and then continued our hike, not realizing exactly how long we had to do it in.

Nearer the top, there are tons of these gates surrounding little mini shrines, most of them with fox statues like this.

Sean was under the impression that there were so many gates that he could really just walk away with one… (he put it back…).

It was super dark by the time we got to the top of the mountain. But “top” was a bit of a misnomer anyway, as there was no view at the top. We’re pretty certain that there was a closed stored that you could walk through if it was the day, in order to see the view, but at that time of night we had nothing.  The hike was still super worthwhile though, I really enjoyed hiking the mountain and seeing all the things.

Back at the mid-way point was the only view on the hike. This is a photo of Kyoto from that vantage point.

There was a lot of stray/wild cats on this hike. This one was being pet when we came across him.

We stopped at a lake in the middle of the mountain, and Nik and Sean wanted to try to get some photos of it. It’s pitch black to our eyes at this point, so while they are unable to get any photos I show off the latest technology. 25,600 ISO is grainy as any grain you can imagine, but it does produce a photo that looks like daylight! 😛

A more reasonable photo, getting a bit of atmosphere into it.

The giant gate at the bottom of the hike.

This is one place I’d go back to, if only to see what it’s like during the day! There were a bunch of dirt trails that we couldn’t explore because they weren’t lit after dark, and a lot of buildings that were closed.

We took the subway back to our place in Kyoto and passed out, after a long day of walking.