Kyoto Day 4 - Forced Death March

Emma had decided to kill me. After the incident in the Sushi restaurant (you'll need to see the next food post, sorry.) she had said "that's it, tomorrow we are going hiking". "I am going to make you see so many Shrines" has never been said with such an air of menace.

And so she decide that we would take the train out into a small village (Karuma, from the fire ceremony a few posts back) and just wander off into the woods...

Oh, there was allegedly some plan to hike some sort of famous trail from one shrine to another shrine, and then catch the train back from the next village over, but I wasn't born yesterday.

Ravens (crows?) watched us depart our hotel and walk to the train station.
If one raven is a harbinger of death, what on earth does this many signify? 

By the time we arrived at the shrine it was raining.
Her plan was clearly just to let the hypothermia do its work.

Or was it? More bear warnings. I took a photo of the sign so
that I would have the phone number to ring in case of bear attack handy.

Not pictured: The sign warning about mountain leeches.

Cleanse yourself of your sins, for it may be your last chance.

And so begins the long hike up the mountains.

A shrine, who could have forseen this?

The sign said to carry a bell or some other means of making noise
to ward of bears. We chose to let a large group of Japanese people
go ahead of us, as our bear warning mechanism. 

We waited for them to get just past bear sprinting distance
and then followed on.

There are some big trees

This shrine sold little bells, that we bought to be doubly sure.

more stairs

a cute little bridge

A gateway to hell

by which I mean more stairs

more stairs

and more stairs

hell is just stairs

forever

A shrine

followed by more stairs

stairs

and another shrine

This is a warning about a deadly fungus that not only shouldn't
you touch it, you shouldn't even go near it. Also bears.
Her plan is more diabolical than I thought.

This is a sign further on warning about bears, wasps, snakes, and killer deer

I note there have been no warnings about stairs

which there are a lot of.

A small frog that was sitting on the stairs.
Probably so sick of stairs he just wants someone to step on him
and end it all.

a little shrine at the top of the mountain.

the trees at the very top.

and a warning sign about the frogs.
Lucky for us that the little guy before was already well fed.

A shrine on the way back down

Stairs back down. A lot of stairs.
For someone who's knee pops out if she goes down too many stairs
she sure picked an annoying place to try and off me.

eventually we arrived back at the bottom

at another shrine

with more stairs...

horse statue

The Shrine itself

It also has a place for votive tablets for people to wish for things.
This one for instance wishes for
"the sun to never set on our glorious fourth reich"

some delicious looking berries Emma wanted me to
eat on the walk back to the train station.

There was a veritable wall of bug zappers along the edge of the forest.
The locals are serious about not letting what is in there loose on the world.

The forest is also line with a bear proof fence.

And every so often you will find an emergency bear shelter.

We got back to Kyoto and since I was still alive, we went to look at
more shrines to cheer Emma up.

 

Then had tea in a lovely, relaxing salon.

before wandering the night time streets in search of food.

It wasn't until I got back to the hotel and undressed for the evening

that I noted the evidence of her assassins and the shame of
their failure.