I had visions of a quiet day today and Dave was going out out town a little bit to the monkey park. I had a bit of a lazy morning then went to Fushimiinari which is famous for its 10,000 tori gates (a tori gate is a wooden gate you walk through before a shrine or temple, to signify you're now on sacred land. I started walking one way and then a pair of loud-ish American girls kinda followed me, then I second guessed and an oldish Japanese man waited for them to pass and get away a bit before saying 'English?' and getting a map out from behind his souvenir stand and giving it to me, pointing me in the right direction. My imagination about him letting the Americans pass first? I dunno. Sat and ate my brekky outside the first big temple in the shade. One thing I have noticed is that when you buy fruit yoghurt you actually get fruit in it. A cut of apple, a segment of mandarin, a large grape. So much better than the indistinguishable chunks of whatever you get in Aussie yoghurt. Also had a sugar and butter sandwich by mistake, thought it was cheese.
The tori gates are no more than 20-30cm apart and lead you up the hill, it was super humid again and my towel that I had with me was soaked in no time, the locals weren't any different though. Past a few ponds and smaller look outs, shrines etc and after about 35 mins I got to the second big lookout.
I was wrecked so I sat down and an older British/French/Swiss (not even joking) guy and his daughter started talking to me which was pretty interesting. Just talking about Switzerland and japan and stuff, gave me time to almost dry out and have a ¥200 ($2.60) orange cordial.
The trip back down was very quick, I saw some odd things though. Girls walking up in high heels, a guy running up the stairs (crazy), a guy in a suit with tie walking down the hill and more.
I considered bailing out and going home when getting back to the bottom but instead walked from Fushimiinari to Tofukuji temple, a few km north. I wasn't really sold on it but upon getting there it was worth it. Lots of old halls, bath houses and temples, including a shrine built in 926. There was also a large Zen garden which I actually had to myself for about 10 minutes which was really nice. Back home to blog and get cool and we were supposed to go check out the fireworks but we were pretty tired so had a few beers, ramen and then just went to the river for a while. The festival the fireworks were for meant that a lot of people were dressed in traditional clothing (i.e. ukata - summer kimono) which was nice, along with the clip clop of their wooden sandals. Looks funny when you see girls in that gear who are usually so elegant and restrained drinking beers and posing for photos.