The alarm goes off at 4:50. I don't remember agreeing to this, but here I am, lacing boots in the dark, camera already around my neck like it never left. The hotel lobby is empty. Kyoto at this hour belongs to delivery trucks and the occasional heron standing very still by the river.
Fushimi Inari by daylight is a postcard, I'm told, shoulder to shoulder, selfie sticks, the whole performance. At 5:30 it is something else. The gates stack into the hillside like they're breathing, that particular vermillion going almost black where the light hasn't reached yet. No incense smoke. No vendors. Just gravel underfoot and my own breathing, which feels too loud for the place.
I stop counting the torii somewhere past two hundred. There's a rhythm to walking through them, a kind of metronome, shadow, light, shadow, light. My father used to say Milan's duomo made him feel small in a good way. I think this is the same feeling, just with foxes instead of saints. Small stone kitsune watch from the sidelines, mossy, unbothered, like they've seen every version of this hour before.
Somewhere near the top the forest opens and Kyoto spreads out below, still sleeping, grey-blue, a few lights blinking on. I don't take many photographs. The light isn't right yet for the kind of frames I like, but I load a roll anyway, because some mornings you shoot for yourself, not for anyone scrolling later. By the time the first tour group's voices drift up from the base, I'm already on my way down, passing them like a secret going the other direction.
