The Rice Man Cometh

As first in a series of all-expenses paid field trips with my Japanese religion class, we all hopped in cabs and then trains and headed for the Fushimi Inari Shinto Shrine. Inari is the god of rice and is usually depicted as an old man with a giant barrel of, what else, rice. He has a bunch of messengers and helpers that come in the form of white foxes or kitsune. There are a lot of real-life foxes that roam the Fushimi Inari grounds.

I didn't see any foxes - only a less-than-cute cat that some of my fellow classmates (all girls) started petting and cooing. I cooed the word rabies as I walked past.

As a quick food-related aside, in Japanese mythology, Inari's helper kitsune is said to greatly enjoy abura-age or fried tofu. He would often sneak into kitchens and steal the stuff. This is why the sweet tofu wrapped inari-zushi shares the name with the rice deity. There is also a dish in Japan called kitsune udon (or kitsune soba) which features a giant piece of sweet fried tofu floating in the soup.

But I digress. You can see the pictures below for a sense of the main grounds of Fushimi Inari. The fun really started however when our professor informed us that we were going to hike up the nearby like-named Fushimi Inari Mtn. to see the seven natural wonders.

What followed was the series of torii tunnels that you see pictures of below – that – and about 1 million flights of stairs. There is a point where exercise becomes overexertion, overexertion becomes exhaustion, and exhaustion becomes death. I nearly reached the death part on our trip.

Even the Japanese kids were hollering things like “shindoi” – I’m tired, and “muri” – this is too much. As I climbed, the sweat dripping off of me, I gazed at the conveniently placed vending machines along the mountain pass. The higher you climb, the more that refreshing Pocari Sweat costs.

I consoled myself with the notion that I would get to see the great seven wonders of the mountain. I must say that we do wonders better in the west. In lieu of a Grand Canyon or an Old Faithful, Mt. Fushimi Inari had a “water fall” that resembled a trickling gutter pipe. Another wonder was a tree that was struck by lightening and lived to tell the tale. Since the incident, the tree has been almost entirely replaced and reinforced with concrete.

B.E.W.