![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
escapewindow[fushimi inari temple]
This shrine of [allegedly, and quite possibly really] 1000 torii gates was founded 1300 years ago. The gates, as they stand today, are all fairly recent -- the last 25 years or so. Each has writing on them, generally for the people or company that paid the million? yen to have that particular torii placed there.
There are also a whole bunch of small, foot-tall or smaller, torii, and other prayer items, that visitors can purchase for amounts that you might carry around in your wallet. I had been wondering why this shrine didn't charge admission, but this seems like a solid business plan.
The whole thing was highly impressive, both for the sheer number of torii and their religious capitalism ;-)
Here's a much less cynical view :)
The rest of my pics are here. (I made a quick video of us walking through the torii, but I was stupid and did it in portrait rather than landscape, and it doesn't work that way. Can I rotate it? Probably. Do I care enough to? Evidently not. Here's someone else's video ;-)
[byodo-in]
I have to admit, I wasn't sold on this place. Maybe the fact that it's on the back of the 10yen coin and that my brother-in-law loved the Oahu replica weren't enough to sway me.
My parents really wanted to go, though, and I played along. And I'm really glad I did.
This place was built in the 11th century, and looks it. I much prefer it this way than its original orange-red garish color.
So... too much polarizer on the standard shots, and a bit too much glare in the IR shots. Still, I like 'em.
The rest are here.
[uji]
Byodo-in is in a section of town called Uji, known for its green tea. All the stores reflected that; there was green tea bread, green tea candies, green tea chocolates and cakes and even plain green tea for sale.
On the way back, we had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner of tenzaru chasoba (tempura + cold dipping green tea soba noodles) while overlooking the Uji river. Yum.
Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel. No light up that night; we took it easy and I finished up my first few blog posts.
