Japan {Fushimi Inari}.

On the hotel bus bright and early heading to the train station for the days adventures.

Fushimi Inari 伏見稲荷大社 shrine was our first stop for the day.

Gregg, Me, Pete, Tagg, Lauren and Nate

 

The first of these redish-orange  shrines was built around 711!

Each is 'sponsored' by a business and is suppose to bring the business prosperity.

We studied this map and decided to hike to the top.

The scale of this map is SO deceiving.

We would hike and hike until we were at another map, after studying the map we realize we had barley gone ANYWHERE on the map!!

{we later learned that it is 4 kilometers to the top - a little less then three miles}

I caught this little guy, he kind of looks like an earwig with wings, a tale and antennas.

Nice gold detailing.

There were several of these fox statues holding keys in their mouth throughout the shrine.  They are known to be the messengers of the prayers.

The selfie stick!

The Japanese love it.

Lauren and I and the babies - we hiked them UP the shrine.

A place to leave prayers {written on the fox face that is decorated by the person leaving the prayer}.

It was unreal how many of these gates there were.

Tagg wanted to walk part of the way.

Nate and Lauren.

Us.

Nate came up with this picture idea.

Thanks Nate.

Can you imagine carving that?!

At the bottom of the shrine there were all these smaller gates lined up which were also part of the main shrine.

And as always, a place for washing.