Day 8: Arashiyama!

This anniversary will take some beating...

We decided on October for our honeymoon, despite getting married in May, for multiple reasons. One of which was that our 10th anniversary was in October and what cooler way to celebrate 10years together than on our honeymoon in Japan! Obviously we didn't plan anything romantic because that's not very us, instead we went to Arashiyama and fed the monkeys :D

Arashiyama

We got the train there late morning after getting some breakfast in the station and sorting out all of our upcoming seat reservations for our travels. The area around the bridge and river was lively and fun and pretty, and the views around were beautiful. We happened to be there when there was some kind of parade going on (it appeared to be for retired police?) which was entertaining, even more so when one old boy leant over to Aaron and squeezed his bicep and nodded and smiled?! I couldn't work out if it was like 'guns!' or if it was his tattoos... either way it was very amusing...

         

We went up the mountain to visit the monkeys... it was such a hot climb! The weather forecast said that it would be cooler and showers today, but I burnt my parting! At least I was wearing a thin long sleeved top to stop me burning anywhere else (had slight sunburn from the day before already!) but I wasn't pleased about that on the long hot climb.

Luckily we had my favourite drink to keep us going

The monkey place at the top was cool, we had to go into a cage to hand feed them fruit or nuts which was fun (we bought a lot of fruit and nuts because we kept running out so quickly and we were really enjoying interacting with them), and then we had a wander round where the monkeys roamed freely, so freely that Aaron nearly tripped over one!

Monkeys on the roof!

When we came back down the mountain we sat and had some street food by the river (one thing was sweet dumplings that basically tasted like hot sugar puffs but more gooey... not pleasant, and then another was a steamed rice bun I think, with a filling I can only really describe as tasting like raw chicken and onion... then I had a sweet potato ice cream (normal sweet potato as opposed to purple sweet potato) and it really did taste like sweet potato. Edible but weird, the purple variety was definitely better. The green tea and vanilla mix was the winner when it came to Japanese flavours though.

Our picnic spot

We then visited 3 temples and walked through some bamboo forest (well I'd seen it described as a forest but I think that might be overstating it, certainly the bit you can walk through does not feel big enough to be a forest!), and down a traditional street with beautiful old preserved Japanese houses. There were some lovely shops and we bought ourselves a sake set.

Beautiful temple grounds

Bamboo grove

More gorgeous temple grounds

A LOT of stone Buddhas



Random residential area when we took another totally intentional detour..

Wanted poster? Or missing persons?

Then we tracked down, with considerable difficulty, the restaurant I'd found online and tucked into a LOT of unagi!

After dinner it was time to get the train back to Kyoto station, and then a stop off at Mister Donut to pick up the next day's breakfast (have to be on a train by 7.20!) and a cafe to have a pancakey dessert :)

Next post: Day 9: Hiroshima and Miyajima