11/4 - Arashiyama, Kyoto

After the Torokko Train, we ascended up from the station and promptly found another stamp station.  Stamps have been our personal mission on this trip it seems.  Like I said before, it feels like Expo all over again.  But it's fun to have something to collect as we travel.  It's a heck lot cheaper than collecting thimbles or teaspoons.

After collecting our stamp, we followed the signs to Tenryu-ji [天龍寺] temple. The signs lead us through the bamboo forest that surrounds the temple.  As the Lonely Planet guide points out, this bamboo forest is a dead-ringer for the bamboo forest in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".  Just waiting for Chow Yun-Fat to suddenly start jumping from bamboo to bamboo. It's all very serene walking along the path through the forest.

We entered Tenryu-ji from the north entrance and walked through the temple grounds.  This Zen Buddhist temple is most famous for its gardens.  The temple was serene and beautiful, but not as awe-inspiring as the Kiyomizu-dera [清水寺] temple that we visited the day before.  Tenryu-ji is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so at least I can say I've been here.  I just don't think I was in enough of a garden state-of-mind that day to truly appreciate Tenryu-ji.

From the temple exit, we made our way to main road in Arashiyama [嵐山].  The road is exactly where the Keifuku Arashiyama Station ends and it also leads onto the Togetsukyo Bridge [渡月橋].  We walked down to the bridge and could see the Hozu River flowing from the mountains in the west.  Arashiyama is clearly a tourist area so the place is pretty clean and sanitized.  Plus, there are plenty of souvenir shops to peruse.

Both our cameras were low on batteries, so we rationed whatever shots we took in Arashiyama.  We would be saving up our battery life for Kinkaku-ji [金閣寺], or the Golden Pavilion.  With little to shoot and all the stores perused, we were getting pretty hungry at this point.  We searched the street for restaurants.  Some were a little on the pricey side.  We found an udon place with reasonable prices and ducked into the restaurant.  So I had a simple Ebi (shrimp) Tempura Udon while N ordered a Tonkatsu set.  All for roughly ¥1500, it was a good deal in touristy area.

Now that we were well fed, it was off to our next destination by bus.  However, I think we must have missed our bus because we waited like 10-15 minutes.  At least I got a rickshaw photo op while waiting.