Today I gave myself the luxury of sleeping till 8am. It is such a nice feeling to be able to sleep in, even if it is just two hours more. My breakfast was the same as always, eggs and toast (I’m going to end up bleeding eggs and toast by the end of this trip). I chatted with my folks, like usually do, until Mitch arrived.

Then Mitch, Michelle, Meagan and I went to a bus stop to get on the bus that took us to Sanjo-Station. We were meeting Hikaru in front of Sanjo Station. Once we found Hikaru we rallied together and go on the train that took us to Fushimi Inari station. Though prior to that I bought two snack dumplings ( I think they were dumplings) and one had sweet white bean paste and the other had sweet black bean paste. (The white one was the best).

We arrived to Fushimi Inari quickly, the train ride took about 20 minutes. It was clouded when we arrived, and it rained on us for about 10 minutes. (We took shelter under some roof). After the finally finished the five of us began our journey up Fushimi Inari.

At first it was fun, going up hill and seeing all the gates, but after half an hour of walking all of us were getting tired. ( I was clearly in great shape…hah.) We would take 5 minute stops every time we found an open area or outside the gates. Hikaru was slowly dying and I had to cheer her on and encourage her to push through (I even made up a song for her).

Getting to the top was amazing, but at the same time it was a bit disappointing. I thought there would be a big fancy temple with beautiful structure…but…there wasn’t. There were just a bunch of small family shrines. (BTW: You can purchase your own gate for about 2000USD). The five of us loitered around discussing if we should or should wait for Riley and Sumeri at the top or if we should wait for them at the half way point. We chose the half way point (mostly cause it had a sitting area)

When we finally met up with Sumire and Riley we continued the journey down of the mountain. For a bit we all thought that we had gotten lost, because we ended up in a semi-residential area…it was weird…but we found our way to the main shrine.

By this time we were all starving, and we had to pass a small food stand market before getting to the station that took us back to Sanjo…we all gave in and bought some snacks. Mitch and Michelle bought crab meat on a stick, Hikaru and Sumeri bought ice cream, Riley bought rice wrapped in bacon and I bought sweet potato fries. (We were all desperate for some sort of food in our stomach)