Inside Arashiyama bamboo grove: A Kyoto shore excursion worth slowing down for

I’ve been to this forest before but, in 2018, I was an independent traveller with no deadlines or itinerary beyond a return flight to New Zealand. Today, I’m visiting courtesy of a Japan Explorer cruise on the Diamond Princess – my cruise ship home, currently docked an entire city away in Kobe.

Group tours and guided shore excursions are not a compulsory part of the cruise experience. In my experience, Japanese public transport is safe, efficient and easy to self-navigate. I probably could have got my sister and I to Arashiyama unaided, but I also know that if we are late back to that ship, it will leave without us.

Eight hours to do Kyoto from Kobe and back again? Get a guide (and fight your sister for the window seat on the tour bus).

I remember Kyoto as a calmer, less crowded antidote to manic Tokyo. Busy in the tourist hot spots, but not overrun. It’s a 30-minute trip from the city centre to the sightseeing district of Arishiyama, and when we swing into the main thoroughfare, I’m gobsmacked. The street is Shibuya crossing-level packed and this, confirms our guide, is what it now looks like year round.

Fortify yourself with a skewer of dango – soft, chewy, rice flour balls daubed with a sweet-and-salty soy sauce glaze – and go forth into the fray.

It only takes a minute to walk the “moon crossing” bridge Togetsu-kyo (but you might queue for longer to get the best group photo in front of it). The landmark is popular with film and television makers and has been here, in one form or another since the 1600s. The version I’m standing on was completed in 1934, but it looks older thanks to the cedar cladding that hides a concrete skeleton.

In two weeks, says Mr Yasuda, the mountain and valley we can see from Togetsu-kyo will be swathed in cherry blossoms. The bridge got its name from an emperor on a night-boating excursion who thought it looked like the full moon was crossing the structure. Hearing this story, I’m struck, as I frequently am in Japan, at how closely locals live with the natural world.

The smooth, sealed path into the bamboo grove seems only marginally less crowded than the shopping street. The trick is to stand still and look up. My vision is fringed in soft green light and the clok-clok-clok of bamboo canes in the breeze is as calming as a temple bell. Everybody else on the path melts away. My body has synced with the forest.

It grows so straight and orderly that it looks hand-planted but this grove is, in fact, a natural phenomenon and its soundscape has been listed among the country’s most treasured. New Zealand might have a dawn chorus, but there is something uniquely wonderful about listening to a grass that grows so tall, I’ve mistaken it for a tree.

There is a lot more to Arashiyama than this bamboo forest that backs onto a mountain park, but our itinerary is as jammed as that shopping street. We ticked off Kyoto’s golden pavilion earlier this morning and this afternoon, we’ll experience a mini version of a traditional tea ceremony.

If you had time, you could do the uphill hike to see a troop of Japanese macaques, ride a rickshaw down some (slightly) quieter paths, or wander the kimono forest at the Randen Arashiyama Station. Actually, you should definitely find a few minutes to duck across the road near the entrance to Tenryuji Temple to view this only-in-Japan installation of more than 600, two-metre tall cylinders decorated with exquisitely patterned textiles that is apparently even prettier at night when it’s illuminated.

According to some estimates, Japan has 150,000 Shinto shrines and 80,000 Buddhist temples.

At Nonomiya-jinja shrine, Mr Yasuda has taken us through some basics. I finally learn the significance of the shimenawa – the braided rope, hung with zig-zag paper lightning and strands of straw – that separates the sacred from the profane, and receive a crash course in the coin-bell-bow-clap-bow worship sequence I’ve never previously mastered.

I am as guilty as the next tourist of treating these special places as a photo op. In the 700-year-old Sogenchi Garden on the Tenryuji Temple grounds, our guide explains the concept of “shakkei” or “borrowed landscape” – the way the bigger natural beauty of an area is used to backdrop and expand the manmade.

Take your time to sit and contemplate the central pond. I suspect it’s more rewarding than elbowing a dozen people out of the way to snap a photo of a single, early blossoming cherry tree.

Breathe. And stretch. Because now it’s lunchtime and we’re booked into Shigetsu, where we sit on the floor on a tatami mat in front of a very low table and our hip flexors are finished long before a bowl of mucilaginous soup, steamed rice and five to nine bean curd-adjacent sides (about $40-$90 per person, depending on whether you select the moon, snow or flower option).

Shojin ryori is, according to the sign outside the restaurant, “a vegetarian cuisine in the Buddhist monastic tradition . . . said to cleanse the soul, suppress worldly desires and promote spiritual growth”.

My hips, knees and back scream in protest, but the pickled vegetables are crunchy, the sesame tofu is sublime and I’ve never seen a more perfect snow pea.

I try to focus on the point of this food: “Shojin ryori is a quest not for physical results but for an inner spiritual calm.” Michelin, which granted the restaurant a Bib Gourmand rating (representing good quality and value cooking), describes every dish as nourishing and notes “to live is to eat, to give thanks to life, to cherish the moment”.

This is all very lovely. And I would particularly like to give thanks to Mr Yasuda who I really should have heeded when he advised it was perfectly acceptable to ask for a small chair.

GETTING THERE

Fly from Auckland to Tokyo direct with Air New Zealand.

DETAILS

An interior cabin on an 11-Day Japan Explorer Cherry Blossoms is priced from $3308 per person twin share on a Princess Standard fare; a balcony cabin starts at $5655. Pay an additional AUD$129 (NZ$155) per day for the Princess Premier Package which includes unlimited specialty dining, drinks and Wi-Fi. Prices have been converted from A$ and are subject to change.

New Zealand Herald Travel sailed courtesy of Princess.