Lots of Torii, Lots of Lights
Before heading out of Kyoto, we decided to check out a place that my friend Tehani suggested we visit (she helped us plan our trip and lived in Japan for a few years). It is a place called Fushimi Inari and they are known for their endless amount of torii or gates. It was really easy to get to from the train station.
I read in the tour book there would be “stone foxes” and i was excited to see them not realizing what it meant — literally — stone foxes. I thought perhaps a stone fox was a type of live fox? Oh well… they were still cute i suppose! On this day my parents went to Nara where you can actually see and feed deer, so i guess that is where my head was.
It was a beautiful location, with lots of stars and a nice wood setting. I would have loved to come here and spend more time if we werent already so tired from walking and the previous days adventures!
So incredible! It must be quite a job to keep the gates orange and nice looking! We saw them trying to upkeep it while we walked around. Though we did see a few that looked like they had rotten and fallen down.
This part was cool, at the top of the steps we came to a little lake, and there where some little tea shops you could sit down at to take a rest and drink.
Which way should we go? We choose neither actually, we where headed down and where tired but just took the photo! Hehe..
After visiting the torii, we went back to the hotel, grabbed out stuff, and headed for the train station to take the shinkansen back to Tokyo. We were able to get a train that had a little less stops than the one we took over here so it only took about 2.5 hours this time.
My parent said they saw Mt. Fuji on the way over so we made sure we sat on the right side of the train to see the mountain and kept our eyes peeled. Considering the cloudy weather i think we got a pretty nice view! Also thanks to my new camera’s zoom lens!
Once we arrived at Shingawa station we checked into the same hotel we were in last time but we tried to get an upgrade. For a mere 1000 yen per night, we got a ridiculously better looking room. We joked it was the best 1000 yen we ever spent.
I just got my camera and have been dying to take a cool photo of the city using “miniature” mode. This was perfect! Oh i love how everything looks mini! Especially the cars. This is a photo of Shinagawa Station.
After the train ride we chilled in our room watching some TV until it got dark, then we planned on heading to Shinjuku. Before heading off i took this photo of from our hotel room — we had a much better view since we where higher up and it was facing the Tokyo tower.
We took the train to Shinjuku because this is supposed to be the “happening” spot at night time. I also wanted to find this Japanese store called Loft that was supposted to have cool things to buy. But we couldn’t find it because it moved since the tourbook printed. We had fun walking around the nightclub district and seeing all the of lights.
This guy is so cute! That is the thing about Japan, they even make negative things look really fun and cute. This guy means “no walking and smoking” – it was so hilarious because the moment we got into this part of the city Jeff points and says “oh great is the no smoking while walking police!” and he points to a bunch of girls dressed in vests with this little graphic on them. They were getting ready to hand out leaflets to the public or something.
Talk about cute!! The store in our hotel had the cutest stuff to buy – i did so much shopping there. Everything in Japan has to have a face on it!