Fushimi Inari Taisha

From the main hall the path enters the Senbon Torii, where the gates stand so close together that the daylight turns orange. It splits into two parallel lanes for a stretch – walk up the right-hand one, which is the signed direction – and then it opens out at Okusha Hohaisho, the inner shrine, where the votive plaques are shaped like fox faces.

That is the bit everyone comes for, and it is busy from about nine in the morning until dusk. It is also over quickly. The gates do continue above it, but in loose runs with gaps of open hillside and sub-shrines between them, which is a different and better experience than the tunnel.

If all you want is the photograph, you need thirty minutes at the shrine and you need to be there before eight or after seven in the evening. The site is lit and genuinely walkable at night, and after dark the lower gates are close to empty.

Yotsutsuji is a four-way junction about thirty to forty minutes up, with a clearing, a bench, a couple of tea stalls and the one genuine view – southern Kyoto laid out below, best in late afternoon. The overwhelming majority of visitors reach it, sit down, and go back the way they came.

Above it the path forms a loop around the summit of Mount Inari, and the character of the place changes entirely. The gates keep coming, but so do hundreds of small stone altars, mossed and stacked in clearings, left by worshippers over a century and a half. It is quiet, slightly strange, and the part of Fushimi Inari that is actually a working religious mountain rather than a photograph.

The full loop takes about two hours at a steady pace. It is a real climb – stone steps, roughly 230 metres of ascent – and there is no shortcut down from the top, so commit at Yotsutsuji or turn back there.

Because there is no gate, Fushimi Inari absorbs the hours no other sight can use. Before 7:00 it is nearly empty and the light through the gates is at its best. After 19:00 it is empty again and lit. In between, from about 9:30, the lower section is a moving queue.

This makes it the natural first or last item on a Kyoto day, and a good answer to an awkward evening. It also pairs neatly with the Fushimi sake district, which is a few stops further south on the Keihan line and closes in the late afternoon – sake breweries first, shrine after dark.

One practical warning: the summit loop is genuinely dark at night away from the lower gates, the lighting is patchy above Yotsutsuji, and there is wildlife on the mountain. The night visit is for the lower section.