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.

Ichiran in Tokyo. Forms to fill out for your order, and little privacy booths. And a spigot of water.

I have a number of day posts to put up, but the Wi-Fi isn’t great and I was tired last night. I’ll get to them before I post a “lessons learned” post!

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This day started off not horrible, but got super super rainy just before we got to the shrine. Like, gonna drown kind of rain. The guys had umbrellas, but I eschew such nonsense…until I’m going to drown, at which point I huddle under the nearest umbrella like it’s going to rain until the end of days.

Lots of graves on this walk.

Afterwards we discovered that Nik had waypointed us towards the wrong shrine. He thought it was super close. It wasn’t, so this was a really long walking day. That’s ok, because both of the place we saw this day were super cool.

Nik says this thing is too orange. He’s watched Amadeus recently, so I quoted “too many notes” at him.

There was a huge parade of girls in kimonos at this shrine. We later found out that there is a rental place down the hill. Absolutely beautiful colours!

Sean asked, in Japanese, if we could take this girls photo. (unlike the above photo, which was not taken with permission…). She responded that she was Thai! Goes to show you that if you wear a kimono in Japan, you’re gonna get Japanese spoken at you.

The shrine across the way.

The way…from the shrine across the way. As in, we walked to that orange thing in the distance and took a photo across the gorge. 🙂

As I think noted way back when, I’ve really gotten into the cleansing. It’s nice. It’s a simple ritual, and I feel slightly more peaceful afterwards. So I couldn’t pass up the chance to get into Cleansing Xtreme Edition!

There was a line up…

Just some random garden photos.

After the shrine, we walked the other direction away from it. There is a street with a ton of tourist things on it. I like this photo of Nik in the street!

After we left this place, we walked for a bit to try to find a good place to see the sunset. We had a plan to get to another big shrine area that I’d been really wanting to see. I was a bit annoyed that we were hitting it near sundown, but we really made up for it! (as you’ll see in part 3!) We ended up catching a cab to the next place because we thought it would help made sunset…it didn’t, but that was ok.

I spent most of this evening babysitting the last post, so I’m really hoping that this one uploads all the photos successfully while I sleep! Good night, Pacific Standard Time! 🙂

We decided to walk from our place to two significant temples that were within walking distance. On our way, we stopped a few times.

This place photo is from right outside our apartment, I can see this from the balcony.

This next one is a big Buddhist temple nearby.

Kyoto station is impressive.

A garden.

And another temple.

Then, we get into a lot of photos because the next two places were super impressive.

It was nice during this part of the walk, but had been threatening to rain all day.

It was super raining when we leave Arima Onsen, so we planned to sit on the train and watch the world go by on this day. Some really great villages and mountains and rivers on the train from Arima to Fukuchiyama!

Again we had some free time while traveling, so we stopped in Fukuchiyama because we saw a castle while on the train. It was closed, so we just wandered the grounds for a bit.

We got to Osaka and the place wasn’t the greatest. Smelled bad, some trouble with the door and we couldn’t figure out the wifi password. It worked in the end, the smell cleared up and we obviously opened the door, but it was annoying. A really cheap and decent restaurant around the corner, then back home for some drinking and Star Realms. 🙂

Only two photos here, because hot springs are hot and wet and my tough camera battery was dead the one time I remembered it.

This was a really nice place. We were instructed to wear the outfits provided while wandering around the resort, and even in town. I saw people wearing things like these in town, but we elected not to.

“Nice” does not equal “big” this was our sleeping arrangements and living room while we stayed here. Just the one night.

The hot springs themselves were really great. Public and private ones you could book, really nice and hot and relaxing. There was a public shower area where you sat and cleaned yourself, and I felt like I could just sit and scrub for as long as I wanted. I love taking a shower, but often feel rushed – I have to go somewhere most times – so it was nice to be able to sit and do the work.

We went to the hot springs 4 times over the hours we were there, and left around 11am the next morning. To a lot, a lot, of rain.

(Programming note: it’s April 15th as I post these, and it may be slow going from here. The wifi is suuuuuper slow to upload photos, and we take it with us when we go walking so big posts take a long while to load. I’ll get it all, just maybe not before I get home!)

We had some time to kill after leaving Osaka, before arriving at Arima Onsen. We got on a train with the intention of getting off randomly to visit places that looked neat from the train car. We arrived at Osaka station and saw this building off in the distance.

We put our rolly bags into a temporary storage locker and started walking. Japan is filled with crazy looking buildings like this one, but we were told that this was the “Floating Garden” and we wanted to see it.

The escalator going up that you see in those cross-beams in the photos above.

A view down of the same escalator.

The view from the top.

We were lied to. There was no garden, floating or otherwise, in the building. Cool building and cool view though!

Back in time again! We took the train out to the countryside and walked around a little village for the afternoon.

This place is fun. Sean dropped his sunglasses down the embankment, so I went down to get them. I put my stuff down on the path, climbed down and climbed up again. …then forgot my phone on the path. Realized this 15 minutes later and had to run back to get it. Problem solved, have phone, but damnit I hate when that happens.

At the train station before we got here, Sean bought cake and shared it.

This is a fairly common example of a house in the area. Not a lot of people, but man were their houses gorgeous! (to be fair, I took photos of the most beautiful houses, although most had a similar style, not all were this lovely)

Mini temple in the middle of some farm land.

I loved this house because most of it looks like this Japanese stereotype, but the balcony is filled with items that could be on a balcony in Vancouver. 🙂

We had decided to go to another train station (free train is awesome!!) and visit the oldest shrine in Japan, but got distracted by this shrine. We saw a gateway, which led up the hill and to the highway here.

At the top of those stairs, shrine! We took photos and cleansed ourselves again, and gave money to appease the spirits and hope all went well.

Hungry, we found a corner store and bought the most delicious apples.

We got on the train again and got off in the town with the oldest shrine. We were hungry, so we found a restaurant that looked good and sat down. Little did we know at the time that we’d be spending many hours there. I posted about those giant bottles of beer before, then were 650 yen, which is an excellent price. We bought 7 of them before we left, and a ton of fish. The most delicious fish I’ve had on the trip so far. We didn’t make it to the shrine!

That night we trained home, dropped off our stuff and headed out to go drinking. We wandered to a place called Space Station that sounded like it might be up our alley, but it was full and the other two didn’t so much like it. (It was playing my kind of music…)

We had pizzas and another drink at a Spanish themed bar/restaurant then continued on.

Almost our last hope before calling it quits and giving up was the Rock Rock Music bar. We went up 3 floors to a little bar, with only 2 other people in it. And it wasn’t a small place. We ordered a drink, because we were there. Before that drink ended, another 8 people showed up as a group and they really livened the place up. They were playing darts and dancing, and the DJ put on some 90s pop punk and we ended up staying there and drinking a lot before 2am when the place closed!

Back home, Sean and I had a game of Star Realms since we didn’t want to lie down for fear of the spins. I had an excellent drunken text conversation with Miranda, since 3am local is 11am PST and I think it was a weekend. She had drunkenly text me the “night” (Vancouver time) before, but I think I may have been a little more over the top. I don’t drink to excess often, but this was a wicked fun night. 🙂

We had to wake up the next morning for 9am so we could pack and be out the door by 10am, as this was our last night in Osaka and we had to check out of our residence. Rough morning! We had nothing but training to Arima Onsen planned for the next day…which is another post!

I realize I’m jumping ahead, but I’m sitting on a train and have some phone photos.

Breakfast of curry tonkatsu! Breaded pork with udon noodles and curry, it was so good!

It is so raining today. We’re soaked. Thankfully, the train is warm enough and covered.

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Every toilet I’ve seen has a control panel nearby for a variety of functions. One button washes your bum…

Also, the faucet on the back of the tank to rinse your hands while the tank fills.

No soap though. Often no soap in public restrooms either. 🙁

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