Torii Gate Family

Whenever my father sees a picture of the Spanish Steps in Rome he says: "Hey, there's a McDonald's [restaurant] right behind you!"

And for this lovely photograph, we are bordering a neighborhood of Love Hotels. Only in Japan could them manage to merge the two peacefully. Less than fifty meters behind me is an entrance to one.

Regardless, this is a very nice photograph of my parents looking fresh after a very long flight! This is the same temple as the paper mache sculpture formed from paper wishes.

On a more serious note, torii gates are quite popular at Japanese shrines. The root tori (with only one letter i here) actually means chicken or bird. It is supposed to a play on words for the bars that chicken roost upon at farms. They added one more horizontal bar and decided it would demarcate shrines.