Budget · 3-hour walk · Kyoto
Arashiyama in three hours
The bamboo grove, the Zen garden behind it and the bridge over the Katsura.
Arashiyama is twenty minutes west of the centre and works best as a half-day of its own rather than tacked onto a temple circuit. The grove is the photograph everyone has seen and is genuinely brief — a few hundred metres — so the route puts the temple garden and the hillside villa around it, which are the reasons to stay. Be at the bamboo before eight or accept that you are in a queue.
The route, stop by stop
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Togetsukyo Bridge
The Moon Crossing Bridge, first built in the 9th century, rebuilt in the 1930s in wood-clad concrete. The mountain behind it is the view the district is named for.
20 min here Walk here → -
Tenryu-ji
Head temple of its Rinzai Zen branch and a UNESCO site. The Sogenchi garden behind it has survived from the 14th century essentially unchanged, which almost nothing in Kyoto has.
45 min here Walk here → -
Arashiyama Bamboo Grove
Four hundred metres of path, and the sound is the point — the Japanese government lists it as one of the hundred soundscapes worth preserving. Go at dawn.
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Okochi Sanso Garden
A film actor's villa and hillside garden at the top of the grove. The entry fee includes matcha and a sweet, almost nobody walks the extra five minutes, and the view over the city is the best in the district.
45 min here Walk here →
More in Kyoto
Every walking route in Kyoto, or the full Kyoto guide for where to stay and what a day costs.