Hiking in the Rain

Forecast for today, rain and thunderstorms. It looks like it won't be stopping until tomorrow night. Despite that we took our umbrellas and decided to hike up a mountain.




The mountain in question is Mount Inari, home to the Fushimi Inari shrine. This shrine was built for the Shinto god of rice.


The key characteristic of this location is the thousands and thousands of Torii Gates that run up the mountain path.



The mountain path is made out of stones, so it felt quite dangerous hiking up there with all the rain coming down. There was more than a few times I slipped on the way back down. Aside from the Torii gates, the many shrines going up the mountain often had kitsune/fox statues guarding the shrine as opposed to the usual shrine dogs.



About a third of the way up the mountain, there's a large lake/water basin.



Usually a resting station is placed at many of the major shrines and intersections on the mountain. This is a view of the surrounding city from the half-way point on the mountain. It took us about 1.5 hour to get here.



Many Purification Fountains were usually placed near major shrines.

Daily Culture Oddity
This is a practice done at sacred locations in Japan. Purification Shrines are usually provided so that visitors to shrines can cleanse themselves of impurities before they enter the ground. The procedure begins with filling a ladle with fresh water running from the fountain.

Using only one ladle's worth of water, you first take the ladle and use some of the water to wash your left hand. then you wash your right. Pour some water into a cupped hand, you rinse your mouth and spit it out. Using the final remaining water, you tip the ladle vertically so that the water runs down and cleans the handle. You aren't suppose to swallow any of the water or to transfer the water directly to your mouth from the ladle.


Once at the halfway point of the mountain, we took a brief rest before we decide to finish our conquest of it. Past this point, the path got much more narrow and even more treacherous. It was much more steeper, and there weren't any water drainage for the steps.







After hiking for close to 2.5 hours and getting our shoes and socks soaked, we finally reached the top.


I'm not too sure if it was because we took the photo or just coincidence, but RIGHT after I took that photo the rain came down hard and fog began coating the mountain. All that "bright light" is actually very white fog reflecting the flash.

Still we made it safely back, we originally wanted visit another location today. But the 3 hours of hiking up a mountain exhausted us, so we called it a day and decide to head back to the hostel and burn up the remaining time at the local game centre.