Turbo Shrine Dash!

So, I'm going to Tokyo to hang out with Eve tomorrow, which means that whatever else I want to see in Kyoto had to be seen *today*. Unfortunately, Kyoto is the city of a million shrines (this may be an exaggeration, but I dare you to prove me wrong: There's way too many to count). I mentioned that this was probably because the city had been the capital of Japan for 1,000 years, and Sister Sakai (our helpful taxi service for the day) corrected me: "Actually, 1,200 years." But what's two centuries between friends?

It was Sister Sakai's day off, and of all the 25 years she's lived in Kyoto, she had never been on the thousand gate hike at the Inari shrine. Therefore, naturally, we went to the thousand gate hike first. We got about halfway up the mountain before discovering two things:

1. The 'thousand gates' is more metaphorical. And not in the usual way. I there are *way more* than a thousand gates. If anyone has bothered to count them, congratulations. The entire walkway for long stretches is bridged by gates as far as you can see, and it's an exhaustingly long hike. The hike even branches off along multiple alternative paths, all of them covered with gates.

2. This is a fairly difficult hike. Even though it's paved with steps the whole way, it's still really steep, and the weather's quite hot. Clarissa and Sister Sakai made it to the halfway point (complete with bathrooms, vending machines, and souvenir shop) before asking that we go back. I figured I'd seen enough torii gates to last a lifetime, so back down we went.

3. The gates are all painted bright orange!? They also have black kanji carved on them. The kanji give the donor of each gate -- large gates from bigger companies, smaller gates from individuals or small businesses. Inari is a fox god (so there are many fox statues) and also the god of commercialism and making money (I am not making this up). Thus, Inari is a very popular god in Japan, and the businessmen like to show up at his shrine and pray for business success. Apparently, for a goodly fee, you can even go into the inner part of the shrine to pray closer to the enshrined object. Crass commercialism seems somehow appropriate for a god of commerce. Oh, we also spotted a miko (something like a priestess) doing a rather interesting bell dance for some client, whom we were informed had probably paid a goodly chunk of change for the privilege. There was a koto and a shamisen playing for the dance, and it was pretty.

The next shrine was the 'bursting waters' shrine (I think; I can't remember the Japanese name). There's a spring and you can drink from it. They provide long-handled metal cups for catching the flow of water, and UV lights to sterilize the cups after you drink. Having ancient looking mossy stone coves glowing purple from the UV lights seemed like a funny anachronism. There was also a stage , and Sister Sakai said that there exists a Japanese proverb: "If you jump from the stage at the bursting waters, you can fly." I was skeptical. Had anyone tried this? "Yeah, quite a few people. They all died."

After that we went to make reservations at the Imperial Palace (the emperor still uses it on occasion, so the security is tight), then went to the garden castle until our reservation came up. Unfortunately, this meant that we ended up with only 10 minutes to look at the garden castle, so we kind of did it at a run. The garden castle has tons of cool painting and nightingale floors, which squeak like a room full of birds being tortured. This is to prevent assassination. That's about all I saw.

The Imperial Palace doesn't let you into most of the buildings, but they do keep most of the outer doors open so you can look inside. The whole tour is shepherded by swarms of policemen, and was impressive.

Come evening, we went to the Sakai family's house (eh, it's small, but it's not so small that they can't have guests) and we ate sukiyaki. *Really good* sukiyaki. If we can get decent sauce, we need to give it a try. Mom's cast iron skillet would probably work (you cook it at the table ... hmm, we'll have to work something out).

No sign of the camera still, so I'm assuming that it's really and truly gone. After a brief period of mourning (and a chance for my bank account to recover) I'll have to get a new one. Clarissa has yet to come through on her promise to lend me some photos, but she swears blind that she has them, so hopefully they'll show up ... one of these days.