Fushimi Inari Taisha

Behind the main hall the path splits into two parallel rows of closely spaced gates — the Senbon Torii, the "thousand torii", which is the stretch in every photograph. It is short: three or four minutes of walking. What lies beyond it is the actual site, a network of paths up Mount Inari carrying somewhere around ten thousand gates in total, thinning and thickening as the trail climbs.

Every gate is a donation. Turn around at any point on the way up and you will see the back of each one painted with the donor's name and the date it was raised — companies, family businesses, individuals, some of them recent enough to still smell of paint. Gates rot in this climate and are replaced constantly, which is why the vermilion is so even: you are not looking at an ancient monument so much as a living subscription that has been running since the shrine was founded in 711.

Where the crowd stops

The crowd behaves the same way every day. It is dense from the station to the main hall, dense through the Senbon Torii, and then it evaporates: at the Okusha Hōhaisho, roughly fifteen minutes in, most visitors take their photograph and go back down. From there to the Yotsutsuji viewpoint you are walking with a scattering of other people; above Yotsutsuji, on the loop around the summit, you can be alone in the middle of the afternoon in October.

Omokaru-ishi, the stone that answers questions

At the Okusha, past the Senbon Torii, stand a pair of stone lanterns with round capstones. The custom is to make a wish, then lift the stone: if it feels lighter than you expected, the wish will be granted, and if it feels heavier, it will not. There is usually a short queue and it moves fast.

The route is a loop: up one side, around the summit, down the other, back to the main hall. Nothing about it is technical, but it is stairs — a lot of them — and in July, when Kyoto averages 29.7 °C and 245 mm of rain, the humidity does more damage than the gradient. There are vending machines and small tea houses at intervals, including at Yotsutsuji, and there are toilets at the main hall and near the summit path.

What to wear, and what the mountain does after rain

Trainers are enough. The steps are worn smooth in places and hold water for a day after heavy rain, and the section above Yotsutsuji is unlit — which matters if you start late in the afternoon in December, when the light goes at about 16:45. The shrine does not close the paths at night, but it does not light them either: the illuminated stretch people photograph after dark is the lower part, near the main hall.

Between roughly 09:00 and 16:00 from March to November, the lower gates are a slow-moving queue of people photographing each other. Before 08:00 they are almost empty, and the light comes in sideways through the gates, which is the shot everyone is after. That is the case for the early start.

The case against it: at 07:00 the tea houses are shut, the amulet office is shut, and the mountain is silent in a way that some people find eerie rather than atmospheric. After dark the shrine is genuinely dramatic — the lower torii lit, the foxes throwing shadows — and it is the only time you will hear the place rather than a crowd. A guided night walk exists precisely because walking an unlit mountain alone at 21:00 is not for everyone.

• Best light on the gates: the first hour after sunrise, and the last hour before it goes
• Fewest people: before 08:00, or after 19:00 in summer
• Worst combination: a July or August midday, when the basin holds 31 °C and the lower path has no breeze
• New Year: the shrine closes its car parks from 29 December to 6 January for the hatsumode crowds, and the approach becomes a controlled queue

• No eating on the paths. Food and drink are allowed only in the designated free rest areas — the street-food stalls outside the entrance are not an invitation to eat while you walk up.
• No photography that blocks a narrow path. The shrine names this specifically. It is the rule that turns the Senbon Torii from a queue into a moving path, and it is why a tripod set up in the middle of the gates gets moved on.
• No wedding dresses or dress-up photo shoots, and no commercial photography without permission. A rented kimono is fine; a styled bridal shoot is not.
• No pets, other than assistance dogs, and no drones anywhere over the grounds.
• Also prohibited: smoking or open flame, climbing on lanterns, entering fenced areas, leaving pushchairs outside the marked places, feeding the birds and wild animals, and parking in the shrine car parks for anything other than worship.

From Kyoto Station the train is the obvious answer and one of the best-value five minutes in the city.

The train fare from Kyoto Station is a couple of hundred yen on an IC card, and neither city day pass is needed or useful for this trip — the transport page explains where the $6.88 (¥1,100) Subway & Bus pass does earn its price. If you are combining the shrine with Tofuku-ji, stay on the JR line one stop; if you are combining it with the sake district, the Keihan line runs south to Chushojima in about ten minutes.

Fushimi Inari sits about fifteen minutes by train south of Kyoto Station, and the Higashiyama temples are north-east of it. Trying to slot the shrine between two Higashiyama stops costs an hour of doubling back. The two shapes that work are the bookends: the shrine first thing, on the way in from the station, then north into the city for the day; or the shrine at the end, arriving as the light goes and walking the lit lower gates before dinner.

Both appear in the one-day route, which puts Kiyomizu-dera at 06:30 and Fushimi Inari at golden hour — the version that gets both photographs without either crowd.