Lucky for us...we stayed at an airbnb right near Fushimi Inari station and famous Fushimi Inari Taishi shrine! We walked to a nearby bakery to get breaky, and then headed to the shrine as soon as possible. We arrived at around 9am and the place was already packed with tourists. We were a bit overwhelmed but soon learned a **PRO TIP** that changed the game (scroll to find out)!
our airbnb was super dope and had enough room for all of us (11ppl!!) I especially loved the entrance that felt very Japanese.
breaky on the way to the shrine! Gotta love Japanese bakeries!
Fushimi Inari Taisha is one of the most famous spots in all of Japan. Apparently it is a place to pray for good luck in business...as each of the red tori gates has been donated by a Japanese business! Foxes are also famous around here for guarding the shrine (usually they are dogs) so you see fox memorabilia everywhere.
haha I posed Eden here to get a pic of her with the shrine...NOT knowing she would do this face!! HAHAHHA...she is too cute.
The boys were up next...and I figured out a way to get them to smile like this. The trick is to use an element of boys that is pretty much embedded in them from birth... "competition." So what I kept saying was, "OKAY...lets see who was the bigger smile!! Hunty or Cam??" Which produced this shot! hahahaaa.
aaaaaaand ...back to these faces.
My sissy and her two oldest girls.
My bro D and Hunty. Hunter loves D!!
OK PEOPLE...HERE IS THE ***PRO TIP***!!!! --> Walking up the tori gates is crazy. You can't get a good photo even if you were Beyonce so the trick is...walk 10 minutes up in the crowd and then TURN AROUND TO EXIT. Since everyone is pre-occupied about walking up to the top of the mountain..the exit is magically EMPTY!!!! And you have a 99% higher chance of getting a photo without any people in it...it timed correctly.
Take for example...
Russ + Jen with not a single other person in the shot and I did not edit anyone out!! This is pretty much miraculous considering there were thousands of people at this place. LESSON LEARNED.
Classic Russ doing yoga everywhere.
After taking a bunch of photos...we grubbed on some street food and then headed out for the rest of the day.
Fushimi Inari was awesome and a good stop off for us!! Now off to show you pics of our next spot which was truly epic..N A R A !!!!!