10,000 gates later

This is our last full day in Japan. I’m ready to head home, but it’s been a really fulfilling adventure.

All the beds in Japan have been single so I’m worried I won’t be able to sleep again with someone in the same bed. I also realised I haven’t turned a TV on in 14 days.

We started today with a train ride to Fushimi Inari Taisha - and a 2+ hour hike up and back to the top. There are 10,000 gates and I realised about 100 in that I wasn’t going to be able to count them all.

Definitely felt like we got there a little late - because all the tourist pages say you have to get there at 6:30am to avoid the crowds - but the crowds when we left were overwhelming.

Perhaps missed the crush by 30 minutes. So advice to future visitors, get there at 9am at the latest.

Legs are absolutely shot at this point - I’ve done a marathon in late August and then trained up for City to Bay - so came into this holiday tired but fit enough. Then walked 20k steps per day.

As such (not making excuses here, I swear….) we grabbed an uber from the gates to a temple back near yesterday’s adventure - and a bamboo plantation. This was very peaceful and there were hardly any other tourist here. Which was a nice change.

Could have caught another train but wimped out and got another uber over to the Nishiki Markets - famous for their fresh seafood.

Embarrassingly we ate at Starbucks - we needed coffee and something to eat quickly - it had already been a long trip.

I’d woken with a cold so went a little slower today - but still managed 19 thousand steps by 6pm. Its a surprise I’ve lasted this long, I’ve had contact with 10s of not 100s of thousands of people in the streets, subways, tourist spots - it’s been genuinely overwhelming how many people we have seen in our travels.

Krissi, Clare and I went out to dinner for skewers after a few hours in the room chilling.

Came back to the apartment and started planning next week at work as well as our next running adventure, next holiday and the small matter of getting to Osaka airport tomorrow.Leggi altro