Sagano Toriimoto District: Bamboo Forests and Thatched Roofs

1 October 2011

We set out for an old neighborhood in the western suburbs of Kyoto, called Arashiyama. As you can see by the first photo of a sign post (admittedly in worse repair than most we see but similarly confusing), finding our way can be challenging. Even those well-intentioned Kyoto citizens who try to help us locate a particular bus or stop often seem to give us wrong advise (or don't understand our question in the first place). In any event we were able to get to our destination, and found ourselves in the midst of throngs of Japanese also exploring their heritage (or eating sweets or riding in rickshaws).

When we arrived at Arashiyama, we followed the road up the hill, past many shops and restaurants. Soon the crowds thinned, and we made our first stop at shrine known as Monomiya, famous for being in a scene in The Tale of Genji. We then walked through a remarkable bamboo forest, unbelievably tall, soft green trees swaying and swishing in the breeze. Shortly afterwards we came upon Rakushi-sha (the cottage of the fallen persimmons), the lovely retreat of the poet Mukai Kyorai, a disciple of Basho. Basho visited there several times in the late 1600's and is greatly celebrated. Several stones are engraved with haiku...one (not by Basho) refers to the time the forty persimmon trees were ready to be picked by Kyorai, but a storm came in the night and took down all the fruit...

master of persimmons

treetops are close to

Stormy Mountain

There are many mountainside temples in the area. We stopped at one, Nembutsu-ji, known for the 8000 ancient gravestones which were found in the area and brought to the temple where they are watched over by a statue of Buddha. Every August 1000 candles are lit at night and offered to the stones of Buddha for the repose of the ancestors' spirits. There is also a shrine for the repose of children's spirits.

We fortified ourselves with some sort of sticky rice balls on a stick with a soy syrup, and with some difficulty found the train for the first leg of the trip home.