12-Feb2016_Kyoto Nara Park( 奈良公園)& Fushimi Inari(伏見稲荷大社)

(1) Nara Park 奈良公園

      At 9 am we took a morning JR train from Osaka station straight to Nara Park instead of going to
      to our Kyoto hotel. We can do that because we were allowed to leave our luggages with Osaka
      hotel kinki as we would return back to this hotel the next day for another night stay.
     So, we only took just a backpack of toiletries and clothes for a night stay in Kyoto.
   

We reached Nara Park pretty early around 10 am. There, in the street of Nara, you can see ladies in kimono and tourist walking towards the park.





















                                                                             

Outside the station there is a walkway where souvenirs, goodies, cafe, convenience stores abound.

In one of the souvenirs store, we saw the strawberry mochi. This is a must have in Japan.
Look at it. It is a full strawberry fruit covered with red bean and wrapped inside mochi. It is called daifuku

(2) Kyoto Hotel

After roaming Nara deer park, we went straight to Kyoto Dormy Inn hotel to check in.
The hotel is just a 5 mins walk from Kyoto station. How convenient!! We told ourselves that the next time we were to travel to Kyoto we would book this hotel again.. The hotel served free ramen from 9 to 11 pm and has an onsen that the guests can use free of charge. How wonderful.

(3) Fushimi Inari Shrine

We rested in the hotel briefly and decided to visit Fushimi Inari Shrine even though it was already
                       

4 pm. The sunset for the day was at 5.30pm.
Nevertheless, we decided to proceed ahead as the place is only a few train stops away which takes about 15 mins.

The shrine is on top of a hill and would take about 2 hours to trek up the hill. Leading to the numerous shrines and the main shrine were rows and rows of red beams called torii. We didn't count them but we believe it could be in several hundreds if not thousand.

We only managed to reached the mid of the mountain. It was getting dark so we decided to go down via another way. On our way down, we met a Taiwanese lady who was lost in the mountain and we thought we can help her down
the mountain. But the deeper we ventured into the forest