A lovely sunday, Arashiyama.

On Sunday me, Jesse (London) and Jane (Australia) took off at 10:30 to Arashiyama.

Shoe lockers where you change from slippers into shoes when going out.

Arashiyama is a little village west of Kyoto city, it took us about 30 min to get there from our dorm.
I went there once already back in 2010 but seeing it is absolutely my favorite part of Kyoto I didn't mind going again.
Arashiyama is famous for it's bamboo forest and bridge that crosses a big river.

When we arrived we first had some ice cream! I had this cherry blossom/green tea mix and the girls had soymilk icecream

Also had this amazing light sweet cake with plums and red bean.

Next to a beautiful temple roof was this worn down house with half collapsed roof.

We wandered towards the famous bamboo forest, it was very busy seeing it was a sunday it was not only crawling with foreign tourists but with Japanese visitors aswell.
Half way into the bamboo forest was this amazing and sweet older man who painted the scenery of Arashiyama and made them into postcards.
I told him we were exchange students and Kyoto Seika University and that totally sparked the conversation. He asked us our courses and told us that he had lived in Spain for a year, he spoke Spanish pretty well and really tried hard at English. He was so very sweet and kind. I bought loads of postcards from him.
We exchanged businesscards and he told us that is we were in Arashiyama again we should call him (he took out his samsung galaxy note) and that we would go out for lunch.
We decided that we will definitely be doing so next time we are there! What a wonderful guy!

Kinji Nakamura and me

We continued our way through the bamboo forest and halfway again popped into the beautiful, big Tenryu-ji Temple and garden.

Loads of Tenryu garden pictures up ahead!

The sakura was very beautiful in Tenryu-ji and everyone was taking their pictures with the sakura, pulling braches towards their faces like this. 

I love the peaks of the Japanese traditional buildings, so very elegant. I have already taking alot of roof pictures.

Tenryu-ji which means Temple of the Heavenly Dragon had this massive house in which you could walk and a pond next to it. Together with the mountain backdrop it was an amazing place to relax...except for the fact that there were about 100 tourists there relaxing along with me...

Tenryu main hall and pond

After the garden we went on into the Bamboo forest.

left to right: Jane, Jesse and Me

A lovely couple in traditional clothing buying a drink at a vending machine.

When we got out of the bamboo forest there were many routes to take to everywhere. We decided we wanted to go to the river with the bridge. Walking there we got distacted by a path going more up into the mountain, we took it and I was so happy we did. There we had the most amazing view of the Arashiyama gorge. I kept taking pictures because I was so enchanted by the view.

I have never seen so many different tree colors, making it look like a big patchwork blanket.

The 'romantic train' which rides for tourist purposes but which most likely give an amazing view of what we saw from up here. 

We hiked further up into the mountain, quite deserted it looked like normally no one would go here. Me and Jesse found many dark red and oker colored rocks which were quite brittle so will make amazing material to make your own pigment with! I have my Japanese painting class next week and will be using my oker rocks for that purpose. Just holding a small piece made your hands all orange and yellow, very lovely colors.

All way up the top of the mountain we could see all over the land below with an amazing view of the small city of Arashiyama.

View down onto Arashiyama, the river and the bridge from ontop of the mountain.

When we finally got down from the mountain and to the river it was busy with tourists again but the view stayed lovely.

Another cute couple clad in traditional garment.

 

We had an amazing healthy and delicious dinner for a very good price. This place is where Jane and Jesse got their soyamilk ice cream before. The place specialized in yuba (tofu skin) and other kinds of tofu.
We took the tofu nabe, a hotpot filled with veggies and different kinds of tofu. Along with it delicious pickles and a wonderful piece of black sesame tofu. I had 6 grain rice with it which was the best rice I have had since I got here. This all and unlimited servings of tea was 1,100yen which is about 8 euros.

 

We took the cutest little train/tram back home, it was a very lovely day all in all.