This morning we walked to Mishima Station to board our 2 hour Hikari bullet train to Kyoto. The train was fun. Although it looked very fast when it passed us on the station, it doesn’t seem that fast when we were actually on the train.
Kyoto was the ancient capital for a thousand years until 1867 when it was moved to Tokyo; today it is the legacy of ancient Japan, full of tranquil temples, silk-clad geisha and sublime gardens.
We visited the Fushimi Inari Shrine (Taisha) after lunch. This was an important Shinto shrine in southern Kyoto.It was most famous for its thousands of vermillion torii gates which form a network of tunnels around the main shrine buildings. The shrine itself is dedicated to Inari, the Shinto god of rice. We saw many fox statues in the grounds of the shrine which were thought to be Inari’s messengers.
