Kyoto day 1: The Golden Temple & Arashiyama

I didn’t describe our accommodation yesterday, apologies, but it’s a hostel around 10 minutes walk from the main Kyoto station called K’s House. It’s got a nice common area with kitchen etc and some comfy seats, and our room is a 4 bed dorm. Slightly oddly it just had 4 normal bunk beds in with no curtains in between so a little privacy issue there but we’ll hopefully not come to any problems, we actually had the room to ourselves last night, long may this continue. Today’s plan was to head over to the ‘Golden Pavilion’, then take a train to a Bamboo Grove and a load of other shrines before going to a monkey forest (love a monkey). 

To beat the crowds to the Golden Temple, or rightly known as Kinkaku-ji, we headed off at 8. A great plan in theory but finding the correct bus stop when google points you to the wrong one is another kettle of fish. After eventually finding the right one (after going to the 3 incorrect ones of the 4 at the intersection) we sped our way past 22 stops to finally arrive at the temple. We were pretty early but there was still a crowd forming, and we could appreciate why when we turned the corner and arrived at the temple. It’s absolutely stunning. Rumour has it that 20 tons of gold plate went into the construction of the facade. It’s literally entirely wrapped in gold, kind of like someone turned it upside down and dipped the top 2 floors in gold. Amazing. There’s also a delightfully placed (or planned) lake/pond in front of it to capture the beautiful reflections. When we looked back at our photos it’s amazing to see the stark contrast between when the sun was out and when it hid behind the clouds, another reason to be thankful we got there first thing when the sun peeked out. 

After exploring the rest of the park, and getting numerous photos from differing positions of this architectural beauty, we headed back to the same bus stop to head to a train station in the end goal of reaching Arashiyama. On the way we found a stall selling the strawberries in a sticky rice cake thing and some dough balls in a sweet sauce. The balls were odd, a sort of odd mix of sweet and savoury which wasn’t entirely pleasant. At Arashiyama we joined the growing throng of tourists and were swept up in the flow of people going to the Bamboo Grove. It’s basically just a bamboo forest with a long straight path in that everyone is taking photos/selfies on. The sheer number of people makes what to begin with a not entirely appealing spectacle even less desirable. I was slightly nonplussed as to why this seems to be such a popular attraction. Although we of course partook in the excessive photo taking. 

Trekking through this, and leaving most of the crowds behind us, we made it to the Gio-ji temple and moss garden. This was beautiful. It’s absolutely tiny, just a large patch of moss with some impeccably placed trees and shrubs, with a small, perfectly formed shrine building at the back. Very nice, very tranquil. Leaving the tranquillity behind us we again delved into the tourist trap of the main street where we got some lunch, me another crab stick and Amelia a caramelised sweet potato. Mine was double the price of yesterday’s (although still delicious) and Amelia’s potato was cold and disappointing, not the most successful lunch (it also started to rain at this point). 

From here we completed the stretch of street and made it to the Iwatayama monkey park, which is a large, steep hill, probably referred to as a mountain, where theres a troop of 130 monkeys living in the surrounding forest. After trekking up the steep path for half an hour we made it to the summit where there’s a large flat area with a lot of monkeys running about. These are the only money indigenous to japan, the Japanese Macaque, nicknamed the snow monkey as they are the only non-human primate to live their lives in such a cold climate. They didn’t really care about the people walking about, apart from the people working there who they were pestering for food. There was a few little fights going on, all revolving around food, but nothing too nasty. I love a monkey so it was brilliant, and it had an amazing view across the city which was the cherry on the top. We spent a long time up here watching the comings and goings and occasional fracas. Eventually we headed back down, bought a few sweet goods for a late pudding, and headed back on the train to Kyoto station. 

The Kyoto train station building is a bit of an architectural gem. When I say gem I mean it’s horrendous, but horrendous in a way that’s more intriguing than horrifying, and is very impressive nonetheless. It’s concept is some rubbish about it being a journey bla bla. It’s a train station so I should hope so, but it’s essentially a massive rectangle, with a pointlessly huge atrium and a mess of steel supporting a curved glass roof. To be fair it has a roof terrace with pretty good views across the city and you can walk along the ‘skywalk’, a skybridge hung from just below the roof which doesn’t really seem to serve any purpose. Overall a mess of a building very much not to my taste but fun to have a look around and take some photos (fun for me anyway). We headed back to the hostel via a 7-eleven for some cereal and bananas for breakfast and relaxed for a bit. 

For dinner we went to the Kyoto Tower food court, a basement in the Tower building which looks really new with a wide variety of different Japanese based foods. Again Amelia didn’t want anything that was there so settled for a doughnut and got some pits and pieces from 7-eleven. Hopefully we’ll find something she likes soon. I had a slightly odd meal of Kyoto delicacies which I can’t remember the name of. It’s basically fried noodles, with a very nice sauce poured on top then ten different Kyoto specialities are added. These range from sweet sticky rice balls that look like rainbows to squid and oysters. Quite strange but still a great dinner, although I couldn’t really recommend it to anyone.