Tuesday 7th July 2015
Exploring Kyoto in one manic day
We only had one full day in Kyoto so were determined to see as much as possible. According to the pedometer on my phone, we walked over 14 miles so covered a lot of ground!
With a little help from TripAdvisor and guide books, we picked a few places that we wanted to see and headed to the tourist information at Kyoto Station for some advice. The tourist information is staffed by volunteers and there is directions to queue for someone who spoke English. A lovely lady loaded us up with maps and helped us to plan our route for the day. I had a very odd moment later in the afternoon when I walked past someone I recognised and thought “I know someone in Japan?!” and then realised it was the lady from tourist information!
In contrast to futuristic Tokyo with its bright lights, Kyoto is known for its traditional buildings, temples and Geisha. The transport system is also a lot less advanced with only two metro lines and we mainly relied on trains to get around. I don’t think this worked out to be any less complicated as we started and ended our day at Kyoto Station, which is massive and we spent quite a while trying to find the right exit.
Our itinerary for exploring Kyoto in one day was:
- Bamboo Forest
- Tenryuji Temple
- Arashiyama Monkey Park
- Nishikikoji Food Market
- Geisha spotting in the Gion District
- Fushimi Inari Shrine
Armed with our new clear umbrellas (to fit in with the locals) and comfy (though unfortunately not waterproof) shoes, we set off to explore Kyoto. The Bamboo Forest, Tenryuji Temple and Monkey Park are all located in Arashiyama, so we headed there first.
Manner improvement
On our way to Arashiyama, I saw a couple of fabulously random Japanese signs on the train, which, along with cartoon pictures, stated:
- It’s painful to get caught between the closing doors. Even more so are the eyes of those looking at you.
- The fire disappears beneath his shoe. Unfortunately, the butt remains.
The signs are from a set of ‘manner improvement’ graphics, which we saw around Japan. They seem to indicate that Japan has a real problem with people throwing away cigarette butts!
Anywho, back to our day in Kyoto…
Bamboo Forest
We got off the train near the Bamboo Forest, wondering how we were going to find our way from the station. It was pretty easy as we followed the crowds and a few unofficial signs pointing the way. En route, we had a brief chat about umbrellas with a group of Brits – none of the guys had ever owned (or held apparently!) an umbrella before – a big day for them all! And good timing for losing their umbrella owning virginity as it rained solidly almost all day!
After a short walk, we found ourselves surrounded by bamboo groves. There’s no entrance fee to the forest and we had a wander along the walking path with tall bamboo stalks at either side of us. I think I expected the forest to feel slightly more ‘magical’ but it was pretty. Maybe it’s difficult for anywhere to feel magical when there’s loads of tourists around and it’s pouring down with rain!
We walked to the end of the path and found ourselves in Nonomiya-jinja Shrine, which we had a wander around. You could buy little wooden plaques to write your prayers or wishes on and hang them up within the grounds. There were also little paper fortunes that you could get for a small donation (outlook: excellent for me, very good for David!).
Tenryuji Temple
A short walk from the Bamboo Forest was Tenryuji Temple, one of Kyoto’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites. It costs 500 yen for entrance to the gardens and an additional 100 yen to get into the temple. We had a wander around the zen gardens, which were really beautiful – Japan was much more lush and green than I expected (probably because of all the rain!).
We then parked our umbrellas, took off our shoes and explored the temple. The buildings were impressive and it was nice to hide from the rain for a while, watching it fall in the gardens from the covered walkways.
Arashiyama Monkey Park
We headed back out into the rain and walked over Togetsukyo Bridge to the entrance of Arashiyama Monkey Park. Buying tickets at the bottom of the hill (super cheap at 550 yen each), we began the climb to the park at the top of the hill. The walk was surprisingly long – about 20 minutes up steps and a steep, muddy path.
At the top there is a little hut and…lots of Macaque monkeys just wandering about! The monkeys live in the forest and are fed each morning at the hut then they happily hang around all day. We saw at least 20 monkeys when we were there, happily sitting and playing around in the park. Many of them were huddled up around the hut, sheltering from the rain.
Visitors could go inside the hut and buy monkey nuts and apples to feed to the monkeys. People stand inside the hut and the monkeys hang from the caging around it and steal your food. It’s such a lovely contrast to zoos as the humans are in the cage while the animals roam free. While we were standing outside, the monkeys were pretty impassive to us but they got friendly when we had nuts to hand out! A few of the monkeys had baby monkeys hanging on to them as they put their wee hands through the cage demanding food – very cute and funny!
There are a few rangers at the park, keeping an eye on everything and occasionally handing out food to the monkeys. We had a chat to one of the rangers who told us that there are about 130 monkeys and 8 baby monkeys in total.
There was a nice view of Kyoto from the top of the hill…but we couldn’t see much because of the weather. The rain did make for a nice quiet day at the park though and we saw only a few other visitors.
Rickshaw for two
We spent about an hour at the park, making friends with monkeys, before heading back down the hill and back over Togetsukyo Bridge. We’d seen quite a few rickshaws while we were wandering about Arashiyama and spotted a passenger-less rickshaw and driver on the Bridge. We asked the driver how much it would cost to take us back to the train station. I can’t remember how much it was exactly but thought at the time that it was quite expensive (by now we were used to everything in Japan being super cheap!) however, the rickshaw ride turned out to be fantastic value! The company we used was Ebisuya.
We were covered in a blanket and waterproof sheet and hidden from the rain under the hood. Our driver was so friendly and took us on the scenic route back to the station, pointing things out on the way and stopping to take lots of photos for us. He showed us pictures on his phone of the river and hill that he had taken in autumn – the area looked beautiful in rainy summer, but spectacular in his photos with colours changing on the trees (maybe we’ll visit in Autumn next time…). He seemed to enjoy chatting to us and asked us where we were from and how old David was. They were both the same age but I’m not sure I would have guessed that – would you?
He dropped us off at the station, took some more photos with us and waved us off with lots of smiles as we headed back towards Kyoto Station.
Nishikikoji Food Market
Our next stop was Nishikikoji Food Market for some lunch. I’d seen the market on someone’s blog months before and had spent ages drooling over pictures of the food stalls so it was on my ‘must see’ list! It didn’t disappoint and we walked along the narrow street looking at all the delicious food.
I grabbed a box of salmon sashimi which was so fresh and delicious and only cost about £1! Cue me ranting to David about the cost of crappy sushi in the UK when amazing sushi is SO cheap in Japan!
We also got some cheese stick type things from another stall. I’m a massive fan of cheese and enthusiastically bit in…then was really disappointed by strange rubbery dough on a stick with nacho-type cheese sauce in the middle. No idea what it was but it definitely wasn’t the giant mozzarella cheese stick I’d been hoping for!
Gion District
After slyly binning the strange cheese stick (we didn’t want to be rude), we ventured on to the next item on our itinerary – trying to spot geishas in the Gion District. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to find any geishas or maikos (geisha apprentices) but we enjoyed walking about the streets with their traditional wooden machiya merchant houses and saw a lot of Japanese tourists dressed up in kimonos, posing for pictures with their friends.
We then walked about the area in search of ramen. After poking our heads into lots of places, we changed tactic and loitered around a train station to get wifi. Using TripAdvisor’s ‘Near Me Now’ function, we discovered that we were standing right beside a highly rated ramen restaurant and refueled on tasty noodles.
Fushimi Inari Shrine
Our final destination of the day was Fushimi Inari Shrine. I was really looking forward to this as it is one of the places that I’d seen so many pictures of during my research. Unsurprisingly, the number 1 rated ‘thing to do’ in Kyoto on TripAdvisor (and surprisingly, not a UNESCO site), the Shrine is famous for the thousands of bright orange torii gates snaking through the forest of Mount Inari. The torii gates make tunnels up the mountain, creating hiking paths to the top. The toriis have been offered by worshipers nationwide as a testament of their prayers and gratitude – for a donation of up to 1 million yen. I also heard that many are bought/sponsored by companies but let’s not ruin the magic…
There’s no charge to go to the shrine and up the mountain and it’s really easy to get to with the train stopping right across the road. The entrance is very impressive with fabulous buildings and then you find yourself in a tunnel of toriis. We didn’t fully appreciate the size of the place and expected one trail to the top – we didn’t expect a really tough climb and a number of different trails to the top, giving us plenty of opportunity to get lost (we picked up a free map of the routes near the entrance)! Totally under-prepared, we didn’t even bring a bottle of water with us. Luckily, we were in Japan, and there were vending machines on the mountain! Don’t rely on these though as a few were empty. There were also a few shops/cafes on the mountain but these were closed by the time we got there.
The climb took us much longer than expected and it was about 2 hours before we reached the summit (with only 1 wrong turn taken!). There are shrines and little statues of foxes all the way up Mount Inari. Inari is the Shinto god of rice and foxes are thought to be Inari’s messengers.
It was getting quite dark as we descended and was completely dark by the time we got back to the entrance. There’s no opening hours to the Shrine and people were still heading up when we left at about 7.30pm. There’s a few lamps on the mountain but there isn’t much light provided so I wouldn’t fancy attempting the climb in the dark.
Fushimi Inari Shrine was a fantastic last stop on our Kyoto itinerary. It didn’t disappoint and was a definite ‘wow – I’m in Japan!’ moment!
With wet socks, over 28,000 steps and six of Kyoto’s best tourist destinations under our belts, we headed back to our apartment, happy with what we’d managed to fit in in our one manic day in Kyoto (getting lost in Kyoto Station on the way).