I haven't written anything here, so I figured I might as well. The story of the Fox God shrine was actually a fairly funny one. I was traveling in Japan with my best friend and at-the-time-boyfriend (with me planning to go back to Japan yet again, it's a little difficult to be in a relationship), and we decided to stop in a little town called Kamakura, which is known for being the "Kyoto of the East." This town was amazing. Every five feet, there was another shrine or temple. It was just so darn cool.

So, one of the days we were there, we attempted to find a shrine on the main "HEY! TOURISTS! GO HERE!" route. We found it by mistake; it was an amazing shrine actually set into the mountains in a series of caves and clearings. I'll try to post those photos as well, though it's hard to tell how exactly the shrine was set up. Don't ask me what the name was. I couldn't have told you THEN, much less now.

At any rate, on our way down the mountain and with time to kill, we noticed a sign for another shrine to our left. I didn't pay much attention to the name, but we agreed to go find it anyway. We ended up walking up a different side of the mountain, up a very, very long stone stairway under a long series of red torii. We could see the forests dropping away from us, more lush and green than you'd expect from a Japanese forest (since I'd always been stuck in Japanese cities, where forests are small, if any are present). On our way up, we noticed a few fox statues. This isn't unusual: foxes are often considered guardians of child spirits, and many large shrines will have a smaller building guarded by foxes where the spirits of children who have passed away will rest.

When we finally reached the shrine itself, we noticed that there were hundreds of tiny fox statues everywhere. They had tiny houses for themselves, stood in lines, sat at tables... We were both confused until I took another look at the name of the shrine.

The Sasuke Inari Shrine. Sasuke was some historical samurai who had a long, Japanese blurb about himself. I thought that was an interesting coincidence (considering the fact that I'm writing a Naruto story), but what really blew my mind was that we'd wandered into the shrine of THE Fox God. Inari is by far one of my favorite gods, and to have visited his shrine by accident... I can't describe the feeling. I feel so honored to have been there. I almost don't want to have the pictures of it posted. >_>

It felt like fate.

And now I'm sharing. ^_^;