9 October 2026
Big plans today. Alarm at 7:30, then the walk to Kyoto Station for breakfast. I wanted something western style, which means pancakes for me and eggs Benedict on an English muffin for Tim.
Then the train down to Inari. The front car still has some space, while the others are packed. Tourists everywhere. This is the line both to the thousand torii gates (Senbon Torii) and to Nara.
Only two stops, and the tourists are already flooding the station. They have guards guiding people through the pay gates and out onto the street. A short walk past a lot of food shops and tourist shops, following the masses.
Entering through the Fushimi Inari Shrine’s tower gate. We’re not visiting the shrine, not another one. We’re here for the hike: the thousand torii gates, and then up towards the summit of Mount Inari.
You can’t see the gates for all the people. Some stop to take selfies, holding up everybody behind them. Not nice at all. Then we start on our first stairs up. There are different stations along the path, and of course vending machines for drinks everywhere. With 26 degrees, that’s probably a good idea. The gates give some shade, but in the sun you start cooking.
There’s a goshuin stamp place up the first stairs, but they only sell finished ones on paper, they don’t write in the book. That’s either down at the main shrine, with an endless queue, or up the mountain at station 10. One needs goals in life, so we continue.
Up and up, stairs after stairs. 20 minutes of stairs, under torii gates in the forest. Then we’re at a crossroads (station 6), and the logical thing seems to be going up further. But it feels wrong once we’re up there. Tim looks around a bit and we’re at station 7, which isn’t on the route, just a shrine detour… all 80(!) steps back down again…
Another high number of stairs up, and finally, sweating and a liter of Aquarius later, we’re at station 10, where I can get the shrine stamp and calligraphy. I stand in line, talking to some Germans, while Tim takes the detour to a waterfall. Must have been a lot of stairs down and up again, back to me, for something that wasn’t worth the walk. A few minutes later I have the blessing in my book, for another 500 yen.
Now we’re committed to going to the summit. Unfortunately the German couple mentioned that it’s a lot of stairs, and worse than what came before, if that’s possible. And they were right. Only stairs, nothing else. Up and up. Tim lets me set the pace, and there have to be some breaks to catch my breath. I’m soaked anyway. Without him I might have given up. That was really hard, and not many people did the whole walk.
The last part is 20 stairs at a time, but finally we’re at the summit. It’s only 233 meters up, but somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 stairs. 4 to 5 km round trip from the station (the numbers online vary up to 3,000 stairs, I’ll take the lower estimate, but I’m not going to try counting again).
Back down towards the station, and we need food and drinks. The vending machine at the summit was the most expensive one, of course. No other option up there.
We decide on a burger at Dragon Burgers. A Wagyu burger with yuzu, and fries. An extremely juicy burger that tasted fantastic, juice dripping everywhere. The beef they use is good.
With food in our stomachs, our next activity for the day is a sake brewery tour with tasting. For that we take the train to Chushojima and walk a little through town (finding two geocaches for me), before we reach the Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum. We booked the tour through Klook. A group of 12 people with a local, English-speaking guide.
First we learn about the history of the factory, and in a lot of detail, the process of sake-making. Very interesting. After tasting some of the water used to brew the sake, we start trying three sakes at the factory. It’s fascinating how they can smell and taste like different fruits, depending on the yeast used. Sake is complicated. Taste and properties depend on so many factors.
After the first three we go to a tasting room a few streets away. Seven more sakes to taste. The first round is educational, comparing similar sakes. It’s amazing how different they can taste, some make you want to spit it out, others are not bad at all. We’re trying to find our favourite.
We had to save half of each sake, and then we got different foods: roasted chicken, radish with vinegar, pickled cucumber, cream cheese and edamame. Suddenly, undrinkable sakes become not good, but not disgusting either. The Japanese idea is to mix different foods in your mouth to make them taste good, not like in western cooking, where everything is already seasoned when it’s served. Very interesting.
As good salesmen do, I end up buying a bottle of sake I liked. We ask the guide for a local restaurant to eat beef, and he recommends Yakiniku Tajima-tei. A New Zealand woman, Katy, a psychologist who’d been speaking at a conference in Osaka, asked if she could join us. Of course. We had a lot of beef, grilled ourselves again. Nice to meet new people and talk to someone other than your travel partner.
Then back to Kyoto on the train, and walking home. The shower was needed after this day.
