Last Sunday I went just south of Kyoto to Fushimi-Inari Taisha, the shrine of many tori that was used in memoirs of a Geisha. When I was on my way there, I was expecting something well,,, smaller. What I found was an entire wooded hillside crisscrossed with paths of tori (the little orange things) stretching over 4 kilometers. The scenery was beautiful. I'd never seen a bamboo tree before. I mean sure, I'd seen bamboo, but not a living 40 foot tall pole- that was pretty cool.



































To get here though, I had to go through the Kyoto JR rail station- this was a first. This building is pretty amazing in and of itself- the place is maybe 200 yards long, and 11 stories high,, full of places to shop and eat. I've tried to capture a bit of it here, but I really can't adequately convey the open air feel of the place. But in any case, I loved it.


































Now the trip started to become noteworthy as I was thumbing through my handy Japanese guidebook. I was looking through it on the way to Kyoto, and it listed all the major festivals held in the region. As I read, I realized the Kurama fire festival was the evening of October 22. Now I didn't know what this would be exactly, but this was a no brainer. Fire festival. In 8 hours. 45 minutes away.






unfortunately the pictures didn't turn out that well in the dark, but yes- that is a 10 foot torch on parade. There were several. Then they threw them all in a bonfire, and carried this big shrine thing around with other fire implements. It was as awesome as it sounds (and more, they were doing this cool chant thing all the while,, really set the mood).

But anyway, this ended around 10:10. Now unfortunately, Kurama is a small city north of Kyoto. It is serviced by a single 2 car train every 10 minutes or so. I don't know how many people were trying to get out of Kurama that night, but I do have two pictures that illustrate the point pretty well (see the big red face in the first picture? I'm standing right in front of it when I took the second picture- that's the rest of the line).




















I made it back to Kyoto around 11:45. By the time I managed to change lines and get on the right train, it was maybe 12:10. Now the trains stop running around 12:30, which meant I was able to make it about 3 stops to the outskirts of Kyoto by the time they kicked me off. The trains started running again around 5:00, so I had alot of time to weigh the benefits of staying at the fire festival for those extra 40 minutes. However, it turned out that there were to other foreigners in the same boat I was- Frank (from Canada, here for a year or so teaching english) and Tara (from London, volunteering at a care home for about 9 months).














At first, we went out looking for a karaoke bar or internet cafe where they'd have a couch, chair, or some other kind of comfortable room we could crash in. However, the train's last stop was in more of a residential district, so we ended up just staying at the station, talking about life, politics, and poking fun at some of the phrases in Tara's book of useful japanese phrases. Turned out to be alot of fun.

































Finally the trains started running again at 4:50, and we went our separate ways. But not before this last photo op of victory, when we finally made it back to the Osaka station.



















For those keeping score, Frank's parents are Vietnamese, and Tara is a quarter Malaysian and a quarter Chinese- I was the only westerner of the bunch that actually looked western. And yes, I went to work monday morning, and yes, it was a very long and painful day :)