Japan – Day 4 – Kyoto and the fifth season
A new beginning
A little peace and quiet from the grey noise of the fifth season
We awoke in our box with the happy toilet, a little leg tired but nothing compared to the previous morning. We had decided that after hiking all over the place in the last few days we deserved a sleep in. This also included reading snow reports about the lack of snow at our ski resort, organising backpacks and most importantly attempting to correct the back and front focus problems with our Sigma 18-35mm lens, I’ll leave the full story of this for another post but lets just say it took some time with mixed final results. As we had left our start a little late we wanted a more cut down schedule, the hotel’s four-day guide to Kyoto which we’ve given some notes on below gave us a few good ideas and it’s great that the hotel included it.
We did not really use the itineraries as something to follow but more of an idea guide and some help with getting the bus to and from the destinations we needed. Our first choice was to go to Arashiyama, which was mostly because we were interested in the bamboo grove which we’d seen photos of previously which looked quite spectacular. There are also as with everywhere in Kyoto, world heritage listed temples.
Making our way there was pretty easy except that it wasn’t clear which train we should take. Our guide said take the JR line to Arashiyama, but finding a train called ‘to Arashiyama’ is another thing. Turns out that on platform 32 of the Kyoto train station the train destined for Sonobe run and will take you to Arashiyama. Be prepared to stand up, it seems that while Arashiyama is not the top foreigners choice of destination a lot of locals seem to trek there.
Lovely place, you have to be extremely patient to have a period of time without people
Upon arrival you’ll be able to find maps at the station with fairly clear directions of how to walk to the areas of interest. One such map is below. Leaving the station you’ll be greeted with the usual Japanese school girls fighting over Argentinian soccer fans for selfies, oh right that’s odd, . , hmm . Anyhow it became quite obvious to us that once we’d left the station it wasn’t, sunny and warm, fresh green and springy, cool and full of rich autumn colours or bitterly cold and snowing. No, we were in the fifth season, that’s the one that no one tells you about. It’s between Autumn and Winter, it’s bitterly cold but it has no snow and all the plants are dead. That’s right, you guessed it, the fifth season is not the best time to travel somewhere, but this was a skiing trip with a side dish of accidental travel. We’re being harsh, there was the occasional brown leaf on a tree, or some red plastic leaves on a light pole and the camellias and quince flowers were still about. Actually if you looked sideways and quickly back you might be forgiven for thinking that while it’s not the most visually spectacular time the place is still quaint and beautiful in the Japanese “aestheticism of austere simplicity”.
We headed for the bamboo grove as this was the highest on our priority list and we’d always wanted to take a picture in there with no people. However with the forty thousand people who were currently walking through the grove with us this was pretty unlikely. We waited patiently in several places but people can be incredibly frustrating when they’re trying to enjoy the same thing as you are, and your enjoyment is reliant on them not being there. Possibly the most frustrating was a group of girls in full selfie and fashion shot mode who absorbed the best position for shooting for about half an hour while we patiently waited for them to clear off and give us a chance to catch a break in the crowds. In the end they won, we realised that this was a fools game and the picture if it were to be taken would have others in it, which, destroyed the picture. But this was not a great loss, we still had a lovely time walking through the village areas and the bamboo grove, eating roasted chestnuts and watching the rickshaw drivers pulling happy customers around.
As the day in the fifth season churned on we headed for a late lunch and then a walk through the Arashiyama temple and it’s gardens. This would be an extremely beautiful place in autumn (Japanese maple colours) or spring (peach/ cherry blossoms) but even in the fifth season it was still scenic enough and the lovely sculpted gardens and moss coverings are pleasant to walk through.
As afternoon drew into evening the people began to pour out of the Tenryu-ji temple and left us a little space to capture some pictures with a few less guests. I would have to say that if you’d like a photo without others this will most likely be your only choice and it’ll leave you with fairly poor lighting conditions but there is nothing else for it. We then figured that the bamboo grove would probably be deserted at night as why would anyone wander through a creepy place. We had also noticed a few lanterns along the way so as long as there was a little light a long exposure might turn up a good photo. How wrong we were, walking along the street we became instantly aware that we weren’t the first people with that idea, and in fact there was a huge light festival on and thousands people (more than during the day) were pouring into the grove. Alas, sometimes you just have to realise that you’ve been beaten. Instead we walked through the lovely light show in the grounds and then out at the river before heading back for another well deserved (probably less deserved than the previous day) rest.
The fifth season will continue tomorrow.
