Revisiting Kyoto

I went back to Kyoto again this weekend since two friends from my program were visiting from Tsukuba. Four of us somehow managed to cram into our other friend’s teeny tiny apartment.

Apparently it’s still rainy season because it was pouring all Saturday, so we spent the day exploring Kyoto in our soggy shoes. We spent most of the day in Arashiyama, a beautiful forested area in the western part of the city. We explored the gardens at Tenryuji Temple, but I especially enjoyed the bamboo forest behind the temple grounds (except for all the mosquitoes, who only went after me). With the rain and fog, it really looked like a magical forest.

Next, we hiked up a hill to Monkey Park Iwatayama. There are 150 Japanese monkeys living on this mountain. I especially enjoyed watching the tiny baby monkeys. We arrived just before feeding time, which was a bit touristy but really funny to watch - the monkeys went crazy! I also bought some chestnuts to feed to the monkeys.

In the evening, we rented a karoke room for 1.5 hours and relived our middle school years by singing Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears. Afterwards, we went clubbing with some German couch surfers we met on the streets of Gion. It was a long day, but it was so much fun to go out and explore Kyoto’s nightlife.

Since we hadn’t gone to sleep until about 5am, we “slept in” until 10am (since I’ve been in Japan, I can wake up at 7am without an alarm). I spent Sunday hiking around Fushimi Inari Shrine. There were many paths up the mountain, lined with thousands of red torii, leading to other smaller shrines with little torii and fox statues. We also got a nice view overlooking Kyoto about halfway up the mountain.

This was by far the most fun weekend so far, minus the swarms of mosquitoes. I just counted – I got 40 mosquito bites from this weekend…