Arashiyama - Kyoto, Japan

Go to the bamboo grove before 7am. After that, the path through the bamboo fills with tour groups, the photography becomes about shooting around other people, and the quality of the experience declines steadily through the morning. This is not unique advice – you will find it everywhere – and the reason it’s everywhere is that it’s correct, and most visitors don’t follow it anyway. Arashiyama at dawn, with mist in the bamboo and barely anyone on the path, is one of the genuinely quiet places in a city that has largely been loved into crowdedness.

Arashiyama is on the western edge of Kyoto, at the foot of the Arashiyama mountains where the Katsura River makes a bend below wooded slopes. It’s one of Kyoto’s most visited areas, which is an extremely competitive category. The combination of Tenryu-ji temple garden, the bamboo grove, the mountain scenery, and the riverside atmosphere draws day-trippers from central Kyoto and from Tokyo by shinkansen. The density is real. Time of arrival determines most of what you experience here.

The Bamboo Grove

The main path through Sagano Bamboo Grove runs between Tenryu-ji’s north gate and Okochi Sanso villa – about 500 metres of tall moso bamboo on both sides, the stalks thick as your arm and rising to 20 metres. Dawn in the grove, with slanted morning light and the sound of bamboo creaking in light wind, is the experience the photographs are approximating. Come back in the afternoon and you’re competing with tour buses.

Tenryu-ji Temple

Tenryu-ji is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of Kyoto’s Five Great Temples, founded in 1339 by Shogun Ashikaga Takauji. The landscape garden designed by Muso Soseki is the most important attraction: a pond garden with raked gravel, stone arrangements, and borrowed scenery using the Arashiyama mountains as backdrop. Raked gravel and stone arrangements in a Zen garden are not accidents – every element has considered placement. The garden looks different in every season; autumn foliage (late October through November) is the most photographed but the garden in early morning fog in any season has its own character. Entry to the garden runs around 500 yen; combined with the main buildings adds another 300 yen.

The Togetsukyo Bridge

The 155-metre wooden bridge crossing the Katsura River has been here in various forms since the 9th century – the current structure is a 1934 reconstruction. The name means “moon-crossing bridge” (from the observation that the moon appears to cross over it). From the bridge, the Arashiyama mountains rise directly behind the town, giving one of the better simple landscape views available in the Kyoto area.

Practical Notes

Getting there: JR Sagano Line from Kyoto Station to Saga-Arashiyama Station (about 17 minutes, 230 yen). You can also take the Hankyu Arashiyama Line from Shijo or Umeda to Arashiyama Station. The two stations are about 10 minutes’ walk apart on opposite sides of the main sightseeing area.

The area’s rickshaw operators (jinrikisha) are a legitimate way to see the secondary lanes and gardens around the bamboo grove; prices vary by route and duration, starting around 3,000 yen for two people for a short circuit. For food, Sagano tofu – very fresh soft tofu served in traditional setting – is the local specialty, and several restaurants on the river road serve it at reasonable prices.

Stay in Arashiyama rather than commuting from central Kyoto if you want the grove at dawn: several good mid-range ryokan in the area put you within walking distance of the bamboo before it fills.