Words literally failed me when we visited the Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine in Kyoto, which probably explains why this photo is a little blurry. I’d grown a little tired of the crowds at the other temples and shrines in town, and so we took the train south, towards Nara, almost out of desperation. The torii avenue that winds its way from the shrine at the bottom of the hill all the way to the top is stupendously insane, made up of over 5000 individual torii(s), each of which costs over 1 million yen to buy/donate. Actually, I think 5000 is a serious understatement: it took us about an hour to ascend to the summit, during which time we must have passed about a million torii. The further we went the fewer tourists there were. At the top we were almost completely alone. A definite highlight of the trip for me.