(Continued from Journal 2011: Day 7: Bound for Kyoto)

Man, I’m ashamed I left this sit for so long.  Aaaanyywaaay.

Got up that morning bright and early wanting to take in the sights of the Saga-Arashiyama area.  We planned to stick around the immediate area, just to get our bearings and not get ourselves overwhelmed our first day here.  Good idea it turns out!

The sun was shining, a bit cloudy, but otherwise decent.  Great! We headed west towards the “main street” near Tenryuji (I forget what its called and I’m too lazy to look it up ATM!)….  We did a cursory look at a few shops on the north end of this street, and bookmarked this in our minds to come back here later and check out the rest.  Right now, we were headed for the Sagano bamboo groves.

It’s a pretty impressive sight, if you’ve never seen a “bamboo forest” before.  It started getting a bit colder, and cloudier.  And then it started snowing.  Apparently the weather comes over the mountains in western Kyoto without warning.  Awesome.  We hightailed it through to the back of the forest, and entered Tenryuji through the back gate.

Tenryuji is…

the head temple of the Tenryū branch of Rinzai Zen Buddhism, located in Susukinobaba-chō, Ukyō Ward, Kyoto, Japan. The temple was founded by Ashikaga Takauji in 1339, primarily to venerate Gautama Buddha, and its first chief priest was Musō Soseki. Construction was completed in 1345. As a temple related to both the Ashikaga family and Emperor Go-Daigo, the temple is held in high esteem, and is ranked number one among Kyoto’s so-called Five Mountains. In 1994, it was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as part of the “Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto“.

(source… Wikipedia)

And it really is an impressive garden.  The plums were just coming into bloom, and you could barely see the buds starting on the Sakura.  The snow started switching back and forth to a light rain, but we toughed it out for a while.

You can opt to go inside and look around, but all of the doors were open and you could see pretty much everything from the grounds below.  The only thing we missed was the dragon painting inside….

The weather cleared up a bit again, so we started back down the main “drag” again.  Then bam.  Snow. Lots of thick, heavy, wet snow.  Ducked inside a couple of shops hoping it would quickly pass, but no luck.

A quick run back to the house and we were done for the day.  It was about noon, and the snow kept coming.  The initial plan was to head over the river to the Iwatayama Monkey Park in the afternoon, but we decided that would probably not be a good idea with the weather, the trails would likely be mud, and none of us felt like slipping and sliding our way to the top….

So we chilled out (quite literally) for the rest of the day, until the snow stopped later that afternoon.  By that time we figured we’d just call it a day and get some more rest for tomorrow, which would be Kinkakuji and Ryoanji, and then we’d see what we felt like.

Of course that evening we headed back over the to grocery for some more glorious ‘off the shelf’ food, and were not disappointed!

Here’s some more photos from Sagano and Tenryuji.

Related posts:

1. Bound for Kyoto