A twenty minute metro ride north to Arashiyama will land you in a beautiful town surrounded by mountains, the Ōi river, and their most famous site, the Bamboo Forest.We left our Airbnb around 5am to catch the JR train out to Saga-Arashiyama. The bamboo forest, technically a grove, is open 24/7 and is really just a walkway into the forest. But because of its massive bamboo and the abundance there, visitors have turned the grove into a must see spot. We read that the earlier you get there, the better. Crowds will be dense and exploring the grove, as well as trying to take photos, becomes challenging in the late morning/afternoon. We exited the station and followed the 10-15 people making their way to the grove. There were another 10 people there already, in the main stretch of the forest. Because the path is roughly half a mile long, we spread out and everyone was respectful of each other as we all took photos. After about 45 minutes, the path started to get more and more packed so we decided to take the mountain trail back down to the river and grab a cup of coffee. We sat along the edge of the river and enjoyed our breakfast. We had reservations at the bengal cat café around 10am so we decided to walk around town, do a bit of souvenir shopping (we found some awesome tea sets that we ended up purchasing) and then we swung over to the local metro to see the Kimono forest art installation. Spectacular during the day or night, the Kimono forest consists of 600 cylinder lights wrapped in kimono fabric that line the path to the train station. In the center of the maze-like trail is the Pond of the Dragon, named after the Tenryu-ji temple (next door). He is the guardian of the station and ensures that everyone gets where they need to go, safely. When the time approached, we made our way to the Bengal Cat Café. Japan is full of unique cafés, including owls, monkeys, hedgehogs, etc. I knew I wanted to do a cat café and when I found one with bengals, I was sold. Luckily, Chase has always wanted a bengal cat (no thank you $1,000 price tag, I’ll take my $5 shelter cat) and Quinn loves animals in general so I didn’t have to do too much convincing! We were the first ones to go in so we had the cats to ourselves for about 3 minutes. Then a few other small groups made their way inside the room. The price included 30 minutes with the kitties and a free drink... no one from our group got their drink. Hello... cats! Because I’m a crazy cat lady, my purse is always armed with string, ribbon and hair ties (that last one’s not always for the cats) so we made friends really quickly. I’m not sure anyone outside of our party was too thrilled about us receiving most of the attention (the photo of Quinn surrounded by 4 cats is pretty telling that the kitties liked us). Eek... sorry, folks. Our group was called to head out so we said our goodbyes to the cuties.
We had a few more stops to make around Kyoto so we hailed a taxi and made our way into the city. I wish we could have spent a couple more hours in Arashiyama because we didn’t get to go inside the temple, it was still closed when we left the bamboo grove, and we missed out on the monkey forest due to reservations back in Kyoto. But oh my goodness, Arashiyama is a beautiful country getaway. It really allows you to forget you’re just a few minutes from a major city. Until Next Time, C + D
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