One of Kyoto’s most Instagrammable spots is the Fushimi Inari Shrine – famous for its thousands of vermilion torii gates. With the kids not being interested in temples and shrines, plus the crowds, M & N made a quick evening dash to this one for some photos with the kids (AKA complaints).

We arrived as the sun was setting and there were still quite a few people about but it wasn’t too bad. So you could choose to have them in the photos for perspective or wait a minute until they moved on.

Wandering up the hill we entered the torii gate collection. These have been donated to the temple over many years by people and companies. The donor’s names are written on the back of the gate, so as you come back down you can see the writing (obviously mostly in Japanese, but some English).

We didn’t go very far – to get up the hill is two to three hours of walking! – but it was nice to be able to see a little bit of it for ourselves.