Other places that Yuriko visited during her recent stay in Japan included Mizuki Shigeru Road in Sakaiminato, Tottori Prefecture, and Fushimi Inari-taisha, a Shinto shrine in Kyoto.

Mizuki Shigeru Road sports more than 100 statues depicting characters created by Shigeru Mizuki (1922-2015), a manga artist best known for a series called GeGeGe no Kitarō. I’m not a manga aficionado, or even very interested, but his characters are so widely known in Japan that even I recognized some of them, by sight if not by name.
Most of them I don’t recognize. But they are interesting.
I understand that Mizuki drew much of his inspiration from yōkai, a broad class of monsters, spirits and demons in Japanese folklore. I believe it.
Yuriko said that she hadn’t visited Sakaiminato before (though we did go to another part of Tottori once together) and that the statues are fairly new.

I recognized another place she visited, however: Fushimi Inari-taisha, a shrine whose precincts feature many, many torii. And almost as many steps.

I’m pretty sure, but not absolutely sure, that I visited Fushimi a good many years ago — nearly 30 — and climbed many steps through many orange torii.