Japan: RED

We spent most of beautiful November in Japan and experienced all the colors of autumn, ranging from reds to yellows, green and even whites. Let’s start with the reds!

Fushimi Inari still is one of our favourite hikes in Kyoto. The first few gates are very crowded, but once you pass the touristy bit the walk is very quiet and mysterious.

Fushimi Inari is dedicated to kitsune (the fox) and brings good luck to business, who all pay lots of money to put up one of those red gates on the trail.

The whole trail has many surprises, small hidden springs for example, or teahouses, there is a place where you can buy a boiled egg by putting a 100 yen coin in a basket and then there is a small hut full of sake bottles! Lots of cats roaming around too.

Always worth a visit! We had a nice tea and bowl of soba at a small teahouse overlooking Kyoto.

And we encountered a real kitsune along the way haha

Close to the route to Fushimi Inari, we discovered another amazing temple complex: the Sanjusangendo temple. This temple has a hall filled with a thousand buddha statues. We couldn’t take pictures but you can imagine how impressive that was. All the buddha had a unique face and character.


This hall was filled to the brim with Buddha statues

Another famous temple we visited is located in Uji. This temple is featured on the 10 yen coin!

As the sun was setting, the colors around the temple became very mysterious.

A temple in east Kyoto is dedicated to bunnies! Many temples have their own theme or animal linked to them.
Here was a small temple in between buildings in Osaka. Shrines can be found everywhere in very surprising spots. I really like that.



The kamogawa temple in Northern Kyoto is an idyllic place with bridges and a stream. You can buy a piece of paper and put that in the water; letters will appear that give you a prediction.
I wonder what it said :)

There were many charms you could buy at the temple, so colorful!

In one area you could draw your face in a panel and add it to the rows around the temple! We wanted to do it too but unfortunately the shop to buy the panel was already closed :)

Nara ofcourse has some beautiful temples as well, we visited the Todai-ji, the world heritage site and place of one of Japan’s most famous and important temple complexes. It holds a gigantic Buddha statue inside. The place is really magical.




This dude sits at the entrance if the huge temple. He wards off disease, if you touch him you are blessed with good health! (He himself doesn’t look so good though…)

From the temples we’re going to jump into the nightlife! The color red is a very prominent color in the night hours.

The red/orange cabs drive the geisha to their appointments. Our hotel was in the middle of Gion so every time we went for dinner we would run into tons of maiko and geisha, a sight that even after all these years still impresses me.

but to end this post with something sunny, we visited a little teahouse in Arashiyama. More on our Arashiyama trip in the “green” post!