Welcome to another beautiful day in Kyoto, Japan. Today we are at the Fushimi Inari Shrine,
and we are really excited to see all those beautiful Torii Gates that we've
seen on television and in photos. They look stunning. Will they be as good as
we've seen? I sure hope so. Later on then, we're also hoping to seek out a
secret Bamboo Grove right here in Kyoto that you do not have to travel far to.
Fingers crossed we're able to find it, but first we plan to hike all the way to the top,
following all the Torii Gates of Fushimi Inari. Today we woke up at 6 and we're here by 8 A.M.
So far, it's looking pretty uncrowded.
Before you head up to the Torii Gates, you might want to check out some of the temples that are in
the main area. Some of them are pretty cool, including this one. We are at The Shrine for
Academic Success, and all of these origami paper cranes that you see have been constructed by
students in order to hopefully bring them some luck. Maybe they're trying to pass an exam or
get into a school, and there's a thousand of them tied onto one string. But don't touch them if you
come here! Just admire them. They're beautiful. All the work that went into these. Oh, wow.
Wow, coming here right when Japan opens was absolutely the right call for us, and getting here
at 8am. People are trickling through. It's not empty by any means, but it is not the crowds that
I've seen on other people's videos. Look, this is the very entrance and at this exact moment,
nobody's there. Some people just took photos and walked through, and it's not this crush of people.
I have to admit these gates are so much larger than I expected - so much bigger!
So much bigger than me. Look! I thought that they were smaller. We've seen some before,
up in Mount Koya. They were nowhere near this big. I mean, these are really majestic in person. Much,
much bigger than I expected. If you come here, don't forget to look at
the back of the gates because it lists who paid for the gate and the year.
Wow, so much going on here today! It's amazing. So much fun.
They get smaller the further back you go, which gives us a really cool perspective.
After the dual torii gates, we arrived at this beautiful courtyard.
I guess we're not supposed to go up these steps,
and also do all these little miniature gates count?
This is a beautiful map showing us that we have not moved very far at all. We are here. Look at
how much further we have to go. Oh, we've got to get moving. Oh man. We've had enough
encounters with monkeys this year. No thank you. Oh, he's frisky. Watch out! Watch out.
So somebody please tell us, all the school groups
that we're seeing, is that normal? Are they always constantly doing field trips,
or is this just Japanese kids taking advantage of sites that aren't very crowded? Please let us
know in the comments. We are super curious about this. We're here on a Friday. Well, the atmosphere
and the weather has changed. We're a little bit further along and now we're surrounded by
forest or jungle. It's super green and it's a little bit cooler,
and we're starting to walk out of the crowds, which is really nice since they finally showed
up. And by that, I still mean all the school kids. Like, hundreds and hundreds of school
kids. There are a few tourists here, not a ton. Yeah, it's really neat. If
you come here and reach the construction booths as you're climbing the mountain,
know that the bathrooms are on the left, and these might be the last ones until you get to the top.
As with most climbs, you are rewarded with a view,
and one just sort of popped out of nowhere and it's amazing. It's
beautiful, overlooking Kyoto. Right above the tea house here. There's a tea house which
doesn't appear to actually serve tea, which we think is a little odd. We are following a
numbered map that is super helpful, and especially helpful because we are at a literal crossroads.
We have stairs going up here and we have two more possibilities where we could go. We could go here
or I could go here. Thankfully, this one is labeled as the way to the top,
so that's the way that we're going to follow. We really would recommend taking a photo of the
map that has numbers on it, that are like two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine. There's another version that has 44, 45. That one doesn't seem to be aligned with anything
that we've seen, whereas the low numbered map corresponds with numbers that we're seeing at
like all the tea houses and everything, and that is proving to be super helpful.
SO many stairs.
This is a little on your honor rest stop. So, the coffee is in there
and there's boiled eggs and a place to sit. That's really cool.
This possibly is the final stretch before we reach the summit. It's the Final Countdown.
Seriously, it's been a lot of stairs. I'm pretty sure we're here. Made it to the top!
There's a sign over there. It says top. Not, to the top, not the top this way,
just top. There were a few more stairs around the corner, so we climbed them too,
and a shrine at the top. I bet it takes a lot less time to go back down than it did to come up. Well,
that took us about four hours to get to the top. Videoing always takes us a lot longer so it
definitely won't take you four hours to go to the top. Plus we have other business to take care of,
because we still need to find that secret bamboo grove that we heard about. These are
freshly painted Torii Gates. How do we know? Well, here is one of the Masters at work.
You can see right here, this gate, it does not have its markings yet. It has
etchings to be marked, but it's not filled in. That is so cool to just come across.
Super glossy. We have noticed at least one house at the top of the mountain,
and we just passed a postal worker, which is, wow, impressive. That made us wonder,
what happens when you need to do errands and you live on a mountain like this? We're kind of
thinking that this is how the conversation goes. Hey, honey is there anything that you need when
I head into town right now? No, I can't think of anything. So I go into town, and I do my things
and I come back up, only to have my spouse say, oh hey did you remember that I'm out of Coca-Cola?
And we're back to the best viewpoint on the mountain. From the rest point, this is the path,
if you want to follow the same way that we went. Not to the right, and not to the left. It's
straight as you come up. It's debatable whether you need to go all the way to the top. There's
not a huge view from there, but we do feel like we accomplished something, so that's a win. The
better views are from the stop just before the peak, so if you get to the part where it says,
hey it's a 30 minute loop around the mountain and to the peak, the best views are actually
from there. You have to decide whether you want to complete the mission of hitting the summit.
Wow, the gates are so much more crowded now after lunch than they were this morning,
but we are not going to the gates. Now we are off to try to find this secret Bamboo Grove.
We've got to keep it a secret. We'll show you how to get there. You can either start by walking
through the first section of the Torii Gates, or you can walk on a little path next to it,
which is what we're going to do, because it's so crowded. Follow me.
Now, when you get to the double set of Torii Gates, is where you want to either leave the
tunnel or follow me again. We're going to walk along the path that goes next to a wall that
turns right from the double set of Torii Gates. Again, I'll show you what we mean. Come on.
You know you're going the right way when you can see the white building up ahead. That's a bathroom.
This is what the path looks like on the other side of the bathroom.
Oh, there's mini Torii Gates down here. Oh, my gosh. I had no idea. From those smaller Torii Gates,
continue on the path that's to the right. When you see the beer Shrine, you know you're almost there.
It is a dirt path, completely different from the one in Arashiyama. I think we're almost there.
I can see why this is recommended.
Listen.
When you reach some stairs and some lanterns and a few
Torii Gates, you know that you've reached the end of the
best part. You can go up the stairs and enjoy some more of the bamboo forest,
but really the magic is the path that we just walked in on. Also, it is so important to know
that you need bug spray - mosquito spray - if you come to this path.
I don't love the mosquitoes. Oh my god, help.
They are impressive here. It really must be a secret. I
don't think they've fed in a long time. They're circling the camera right now.
That is not an actual mosquito.
That's the mosquito. This is really magical. It's beautiful.
The sound of the bamboo hitting together is what I expected to hear at Arashiyama,
but we were there on a day that had no wind. It was wind free. Today, there's a nice breeze
and we're able to hear that click-clicking sound. It's just kind of magical to have it by ourselves.
This is amazing. I'm so glad that we read about it and made the quick detour to come here. It's
a fun little side trip and it just takes a few minutes. It's great, and we're the only ones here,
and it's so rustic and the trail is just hardly built up, which I think just adds
to like this fantasy nature of this bamboo forest. I love it here. It's beautiful. Yeah,
come check it out. Wow, I haven't been that tired since we were hiking the French Alps
and we nearly missed our train. If you want to see how that turned out, you should watch this video
right here. Thanks very much for watching. We'll see you next time! They call me One Take Willy.
Nobody has ever, ever called him that. That's all you get.