Bamboo!

In the northwest of Kyoto is a stand of Bamboo Forest, and so I jumped on the train out of town and headed for the hills. This being Saturday, there were a number of families doing the same.

First stop was the Tenryu-ji Temple, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with good reason. This is a wonderful spot, with (still another) amazing garden, but also a nice view of the city from the West side.


I next moved on to my Bamboo Forest, which didn't disappoint.


The path through the forest leads to the Okochi Sanso villa, built by a silent film star of samurai movies. It was really a microcosm of Japan: it has its own shrine and teahouse, as well as having even better views of Kyoto.

In the afternoon I took a tour of Nara, the Imperial capital for a few decades before Kyoto. This is notable for the Great Buddha, a bronze cast statue and amazing 15 metres high (the temple was built around it rather than the other way around.) And this goes back to 752, although it was damaged and rebuilt after fires a few times.

The tour of Nara included the deer park, where since the deer are taken to be messengers of the gods, they cannot be hunted. Nowadays the deer do the hunting, for the little deer cookies that the vendors sell. Then there was another great temple that was closing just as our tour group came through.

Next I headed for Gion, the old pleasure district where some geisha (called geiko in Kyoto) still entertain. It was very atmospheric, especially the streets off the main boulevard, which seem mainly devoted to selling midlevel souvenirs to tourists.

I found a restaurant that serves okonomiyaki and teppen, and tried samples of both types of dishes. Okonomiyaki is most similar to a rice pancake, but much larger, denser, and in the case of my meal, with melted cheese on top. Kind of halfway between a pancake and omelet, actually.

A teppen is just an iron plate, and so the food prepared this way is cooked on a simple iron plate. I went for the beef intestine. Very tasty!