Today's adventure took place at the fushimi inari taisha, a shrine in Kyoto famous for the red gates that line its paths. It was a couple of train rides away from where we're staying, but you could tell it was a popular tourist destination as it had station staff dedicated to checking JR passes, and as soon as we got out of the station, we could see large crowds of people posing for photos.
We almost regretted going on a Saturday, as the path was full of people, and it was incredibly crowded, but we found once we made it past the main shrine, the crowds started thinning out, and once we made it to the top of where the gates seemed to go, it was practically deserted.
In the main shrine, you can buy fox shaped ema (votive tablets) where you write your name, address and wish, and hang it up in the shrine so that the shrine deities can receive your wish. So we decided to buy one and make a wish.
I wanted to wish that I wouldn't die from eating too much fried chicken, but MrFodder came up with a better wish, so we wrote that instead. You also need to draw a face on the front of the charm. Mine was meant to look like Tsukuba's peko-chan face from Chihayafuru.... and this is why I'm a programmer and not an artist.
After we hung up our wish, we decided to explore the area around the shrine a bit. We ended up following some people up a path where we found some people sitting around, and there was a cliff that gave us an amazing view of Kyoto. But that wasn't enough for MrFodder, and we continued upwards, as far as we could go. It got to the point where we were starting to see signs saying to be wary of boars, but we still hadn't gone as far as we could go. It was also at this point where we realised we were the only people around. I didn't want to pull a Robert Baratheon, but it was actually really tranquil out here. There were also small patches of snow leftover from when it had snowed in Kyoto a few days earlier (once again, we have managed to time our trip to miss all the snow!).
We had walked quite far when MrFodder suddenly stopped and said, "Can you hear that? It sounds like people shouting." We both stopped to listen, and I thought it sounded like machinery grinding, so we kept going. But as we got closer, it did sound a lot like people shouting in a rhythmic fashion. We both came to the same conclusion that it sounded a lot like some sort of ritual, and I started to think maybe it was some secret cult that kidnaps isolated travellers in order to sacrifice them to the hungry Fox deities. Or maybe it some kind of creepy shrine torture ritual like in Higurashi. Whatever the reason for the shouting, we both decided it was probably a good time to turn back.
Except we were totally lost at this point. We began to retrace our steps until we got back to the top, but we were the only people around still. Until we saw a Japanese hiker, and we thought, if he's happy to walk here, then we'll probably end up somewhere. So we headed down the track that it looked like he was following until we hit a chain in the road. We were set to turn back when we bumped into him and he told us the chain was just to stop cars, but people can continue walking through.
So we started to follow him, and it looked like we were heading somewhere, as we could see some buildings in the distance. But then I heard the chanting again. We were heading back towards the ritual place!
I'm not entirely sure what MrFodder was thinking at this time, but my first thought was of that scene in Rat Race where two people are supposed to be transporting a heart that's ready for a transport operation when they accidentally lose the heart. The realise they're in big trouble until they notice Rowan Atkinson's character, who is a hiker with no family in the country. Nobody who will miss him at all. And they plan to kill him for his heart. What if this Japanese hiker wanted to kill us for our organs and was leading us towards the crazy ritual place?!
We were really lost at this point, so we kept walking, but I was prepared for a fight.
Fortunately, the road branched, and the hiker ended up taking the branch that went downhill, but we were not equipped to walk that track (he had walking sticks) so we took the left fork, and ended surrounded by Japanese houses.
MrFodder pulled out the pocket WiFi that we had, and checked where we were. We were nowhere near the Fushimi Inari shrine, but somehow had managed to walk over the mountain / hill thing and ended up on the other end. Fortunately, we ended up near a completely different temple, and got to explore that as well.
After that experience, we decided to take a lunch break before continuing the rest of the day, but it seems that the Fox shrine deity is already working its magic.
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