Short trip To Kyoto

Kyoto is one of my favorite places in Japan. I remember visiting Kyoto 2 years ago, during the peak of the autumn colors and it was the most beautiful place I have ever seen.

Last week, I had a chance to go again to Kyoto for a short trip with my friend as she was visiting from the Philippines. I live in Osaka so we have to travel a little far to go to Kyoto. It took us about 1 hour to arrive at our first destination -- Arashiyama.

Behind us is one of the most famous bridges in Kyoto -- I actually didn't know about it before, it was just my Japanese friend who told us about it. The name of the bridge is Togetsu-kyo bridge. Togetsu-kyo spans the Katsura River in front of Arashiyama Mountain. I can almost imagine how beautiful the trees behind us will be when autumn comes on the coming month. I wish to come here again to see it.

After we passed through this bridge we had to walk for about 15 minutes till we arrived the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, which compared to before is even more crowded with people but still is very beautiful.

No really good photos for me as there were a lot of people behind me. I suggest that you go there very early in the morning to have the place to yourself and really get some good photos. We arrived at Arashiyama Bamboo Grove around 11am and a lot of people were already there before us.  So, we didn't stay too long in this place, deciding instead to move on to the next destination, which was Kiyomizudera Temple.

I had also visited Kiyomizudera before, a while back, and I can say this is one of the most beautiful temples in Kyoto. I had witnessed before the view of the autumn leaves from the main hall of Kiyomizudera, unfortunately we didn't decide to go inside because we ran out of time. But the best experience I had here was when me and my friend got to experience wearing a kimono for the first time!

I think the best place to go around wearing kimono is in Kyoto is around Kiyomizudera Temple, as the view of the temple is really good alongside this traditional kimono.  We rented our kimono for a very cheap price of 2,680 yen from a rental shop near the temple. You can also choose to have your hair done for only 500 yen -- a very affordable and fun experience in Kyoto. We took a lot of photos and realized that wearing the kimono was not very easy, but the experience was really worth it. You can use the kimono until 6pm.

We arrived at Kiyomizudera around 2 pm and decided to leave at around 5:30, to go to our next destination just 8 minutes away from the temple -- the famous traditional Starbucks in Kyoto.

So we arrived here and were told by staff that we cannot sit inside as there were a lot of people and they can't accommodate anymore. We were sad that we didn't get to try and go inside. What is special about this Starbucks is that it is in a traditional Japanese style and visitors can sit on tatami while enjoying their drinks.  But too bad!  Maybe the next time we can try again.

We just decided to walk around the beautiful and traditional Kyoto streets.  It was like I had been brought back to the old time seeing all the traditional houses and people wearing kimono.

Kyoto is really such a lovely place and this isn't even the peak of the autumn season yet, how much more beautiful will it be in the next month?!  I am really very excited to come back!