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The Fushimi Irari-Taisha (伏見稲荷大社) is the head shrine of about 30.000 Inari shrines in Japan (Inari is the god of rice, or one of them). The particularity of this shrine is the 4km path in the woods which is almost continuously covered with torii (鳥居). The problem when going there is the almost inevitable indigestion of red/orange...
From the sky: satellite photo, map.
An interesting fact is that the place is opened 24/7 and is totally free. The paths in the torii are apparently lit all night too, although I can't confirm that since I left around 7pm.
Regarding the paths in the forest there is one mentioned in the Lonely Planet that goes in the bamboo part of the forest. Interesting but not worth a big detour. You can reach that path by branching off a torii path using the staircase in the center of this map. Since this path is not used by tourists (at least not as much) there is far fewer tall guys who went there before you. If you are tall this means that either you wear a hat, you scan the area above your head constantly or you get reading for... SPIDER TIME! The whole forest is indeed infested by Nephila Clavata, my favorite Japanese spider. You know, the one that make really strong webs. Across large distances. If possible right at head-level. And they're sometimes quite big! During this visit I saw a very nice specimen where the human skull pattern on its torso was clearly visible (in Taiwan they call it the skull spider). It also had a slightly different shape, the abdomen being more rectangular than the others commonly seen in Japan, which are a bit oval shaped. With an impressive body size of 2.5cm (about 10cm incl. legs) it was a nice sight, but unfortunately impossible to photograph: no way to put my tripod there!! ざんねん。。。
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Some photos of this page have been archived.
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