Arashiyama

The changing leaves cause massive crowds!
This past weekend we went to Arashiyama, a neighborhood in the city of Kyoto. Kyoto is famous for it's preservation of historic Japan. This is the city where geisha's still work in the entertainment district! It is also filled with shrines and temples. However, to our surprise, it is still very much a large modern city! The view from the train was not what we expected at all. However, our destination was not the city itself, but an area right outside the city.

The Japanese are very interested in celebrating the natural wonders of their country. Spring cherry blossom season is world famous, but fall Maple leaf season is also a very big deal. Arashiyama, set in the mountains outside of Kyoto, is considered a prime place for viewing the changing leaves. It is also filled with shrines, temples, a bamboo forest, and a wild monkey preserve!

We decided to visit Arashiyama last weekend. The leaves have changed color and it would be our first excursion to city outside of our area. We decided to take the train, having been warned about traffic, especially on a holiday weekend. It was about a 90 minute, 4 train ride. It was also very crowded! Matt and I had to stand the entire way. Once we got there, the crowds got even worse!

We started by leaving the train station and going in the exact opposite direction from where we wanted to be. Even with a map, I completely blew it! We found a tiny cafe with a non-english speaking cook. It took quite a while, but eventually we managed to order a lunch that everyone would eat! After we left the cafe, we walked 5 blocks back to the station and followed the crowd to the tourist area. There was a gorgeous temple district, streets lined with small, specialty shops and restaurants, a river with boats that looked like gondolas, and a mountain with wild monkeys at the top. Unfortunately, there were also 750,000 other people there. It was kind of awful! We couldn't really do much of anything other than follow the crowds. Our favorite part, by far, was seeing the Japanese monkeys. Apparently the 20 minute hike straight up the mountain deterred a lot of tourists, so it wasn't as crowded. Seeing the monkeys running around was very cool!

These monkeys engaged in some amorous activities shortly after I took this picture. This lead to Matt explaining the facts of life to Nate. He found it "disgusting"! :-)

Our first train ride back was so crowded that I thought we might run out of air! We decided to take the bullet train back to Kobe. It was almost 3 times the price, but we all got seats and it took half the time. Trains in Japan aren't that cheap. The ride to Kyoto cost about $25.00 for Nathan, Matt, and I (the girls are still free). The bullet train was about $70.00. The bullet train, or Shinkansen, was very cool. The speed was noticeably faster and much smoother. The cars were more like very nice airplane cabins than train cars.

We definitely plan to go back to Arashiyama some day but we'll avoid holiday weekends!