I’d never heard of this shrine until a few months ago and so this became my first port of call on my fourth trip to Kyoto. After a long sleepless night on the bus from Tokyo to Osaka, followed by a local train to Kyoto and then the subway to Inari, I was at this place before 8am when it was fairly quiet.

Reasons I really liked this place:

1. It’s full of thousands of beautiful red torii gates.

2. Foxes are considered the messengers of Inari, and there are dozens of them (in stone form) around the place.

3. It’s in the mountains and thus slightly away from the more crowded parts of Kyoto.

4. It features a nice 4km hiking course up the mountain.

5. The torii gates appear in the 2005 film ‘Memoirs Of A Geisha’. (Full details here).