After lunch, we headed to Inari Taisha by train. More crowd control here. One thing to be aware of when travelling in Japan during New Years.
Yep. We are there. Lots of snack vendors on the side. Tried a few when we came down, spoiler: they were pretty tasty.
From here, it's good 30 minutes' of wait before reaching the actual shrine. This was already expected.
Endless amount of new year's supplies. Full of soy sauce, beers and barrels of sake.
The gate to the main shrine. Having never seen those before, it is like blow-your-mind kind of crazy.
As you go further towards the top, the crowds started to thin out. Definitely a lot of walking involved!
Yeah, definitely tiring.
Apparently you can buy a mimi Inari home, or donate and have you and your organisation's name marked here.
We reached somewhere near the top, but we decided to have a rest and call it quits. Isn't it a great idea to have an ice cream at 5C weather? Apparently people were lining up in long lines waiting for those stuff.
2 hours of walking, and 5km later, time for some street food. This was the beginning, a pork bun, quite delicious.
My friend was curious at this thing, sure, why not? This actually tastes like fried rice cake.
Garlic fried chicken bites. Freshly made.
Can't figure out what is this, looks like it's pancake filled with custard. Anyone had a clue here?
Very cool. Beef cube on a stick. Seems like they had the longest line in front of their stall.
We then took the train and went for some souvenir shopping (and whisky hunting). 2 days was simply never enough in Kyoto.
Japan's tax return system can be complicating. First, buy your item at participating store, total value over 5,000 yen, and then they'll seal your bags and return your tax yens as coins and notes.
Anyway, at the basement of Takashimaya, although there was abundant of Nikka 12 and Yoichi available, I settled on Yamazaki umeshu, that was around ~3,000 yen, but the minimum tax return value means, another bottle of Choya umeshu (aged 3 years!?, I gave it to one of my colleague anyway)
This wrap up my (short yet inspiring) 2 day in Kyoto. Next: Osaka and Kobe.