It's listed in the Lonely Planet Kyoto Guide book as one of the top 5 sites to see in Kyoto (along with the Kyoto Imperial Palace Gardens, Nanzen-ji, Kurama-dera, and the Nishiki Markets). It's also the second easiest to get to from my house of the top five, but for some reason it was the last of the top five for me to visit. Since Ritsuko and had a rare Tuesday afternoon and evening off, so we decided to head to the Shrine in the afternoon and stop at Kyoto station on the way back for a dinner at a nice restaurant near the station.
Given the conditions (it was overcast with a bit of light rain) I was glad I had my D700 and 24 f/2.8 lens, to be able to capture a handheld shot at high iso and wide open aperture. It would have been hard to do with the D80 + Sigma 10-20 f/4-5.6 under those conditions, given I'd lose two stops of iso and at least a stop of aperture.
It is usual for a Shinto shrine to only have a few gates, because each gate represents passing through to a more holy part of the shrine. However there are thousands of gates all next to each other in the kilometres of maze like paths at Fushimi Inari Taisha. It's not the only shrine like this, there is a similar one near Tokyo.
Note 04/11/2011: Still very busy at the moment, might be a little while before I post another PBLOG, but I will try to update some of the other galleries in a few days.