In early December of 2022, I made it my goal that Kyoto be my last trip of the year for one final autumn foliage trip. Kyoto is a very popular tourist destination in southern Japan, being the ancient capital of Japan more than 1,000 years before Tokyo. Temples are all over the city, and people usually come in spring to see the sakura (Japanese cherry blossoms) or in autumn for the foliage.

I will admit that my time here was rather rushed as one again, I only had a weekend (Saturday and some of Sunday) to explore. The hotel I stayed at was not too far from Kyoto Station, and it was good. Kyoto Station itself, however, seemed massive and confusing to navigate (that is an understatement). I tried to get a bus pass online but the one I was looking at was apparently sold out for this weekend. So, most of my transportation consisted of taxis and walking.

Trying to get through the station to the correct train was much more of a hassle that I had anticipated. Kyoto Station is huge and the layout is not intuitive at all. My Google Maps made it seem like a seamless trip from one side of the station to the other, but the walls, stairs, and pathways to trains going to other areas assured me that this wasn’t the case at all. At one point, a female traveler tried to help me when I wasn’t able to get back into one area of the station (this was because I technically had not left the station yet), but even this didn’t work. I finally made my way back out to the main road area and decided to just take a taxi to the site!

Fushimi Inari Taisha

After researching which areas to explore, I decided to start with (rather than end with) somewhere closest to my hotel. That ended up being Fushimi Inari Taisha. This site is known as the site of 1,000 torii gates. This shrine was created for the Inari (the deity of harvests and business success) and is considered the “head” of all Japan’s Inari shrines. It was apparently built in 711, before Kyoto was Japan’s capital.

As I had hoped, I did come across some nice foliage, although most of it occurred after I had finished passing by the torri gates and dedication monuments.

Although the colors here were wonderful, there was a lot of direct sun mixed with many trees. This caused a lot of contrast and shadows, so this made photographing difficult.

This was, for sure, a long and active day. Stay tuned for the next part of this day full of temples and colors.