A place where dreams come true

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Kuchiiri Dolls (口入人形)

Kuchiiri Doll is a set of three ceramic dolls resembling fox in human form, they are painted by hands so their facial expressions will slightly differ from each other, which makes each of them unlike and it seems they have personalities. The shrine is traditionally known for improving relationships and career. The set of dolls are a family, and the arrangement is placing the female on the left, male on the right with the messenger in the middle. The ritual is to bring these three dolls to Kuchiiri-Inari shrine, make your wish, bring it home and arrange those dolls in your room facing towards you. Once your dream have come true, bring them back to the shrine and place it there, arranged in the same way with the other sets placed by other people. So basically, each set placed at shrine means a dream have came true for someone. I'm not a believer, but seeing so many sets of dolls placed at the shrine means many dreams have come true, and it was a good feeling to know that. So eventually, I bought one set and made a wish for fun. It reminds me of my dream every morning I wake up looking at this set of dolls. Its becoming something meaningful in my life.

Location:

Kuchiiri-Inari (口入稲荷) shrine is situated in Fushimi-Inari-Taisha (伏見稲荷大社), one of the most visited tourist spot known for its "thousand torii" (there's more than a thousand). Its a small shrine located in one of the many branched roads in the mountain. That day I travelled to Mt. Inari, it was sunny, cloudless and really hot, and I was travelling with my parents so we decided to give up walking towards the top of the mountain (but I will try again). We made the turn at the T-junction known as Mittsu-tsuji (三つ辻). We walked down the narrow road, found numerous shrines, houses and of course vending machines along the way, found a few adorable cats and we finally reached the Kuchiiri-Inari. After that, we kept walking down the mountain, we did not worry about getting lost because there were many interesting shrines, history, houses and the beautiful sky and greenery accompanied by the sound of Cicada. At the end, the road turns out to be a route back the main entrance of Fushimi-Inari-Taisha.