We woke up really late for us, at 7:30am. The plan was to head to Arashiyama early, but we ended up taking the 9:30 train to Osaka station. (To Book Train Travel in Japan Click Here)From here we were supposed to take the rapid 29 minute train to Kyoto, but all the trains were running 6-10 minutes late. Finally it said that our train was next, and then it never showed up! This was really weird. Japan is certainly not know for this, and we had never encountered anything like this before!

We ended up taking the local line to Kyoto, it took about an hour. We arrived at Kyoto station around 12 noon and then transferred to the Sagano line for Saga-Arashiyama to see the bamboo forest.

Arashiyama was crawling with tourists. We walked about 15 minutes to the entrance of the bamboo walk. The grove was so beautiful and peaceful, despite the giant hordes of tourists. We were able to find a spot to take some photos off to the side.

After the main bamboo grove, we turned left and this was the absolute highlight!

We walked by cherry blossoms with next to no other tourists!

We next walked down a stairwell that descended a cliff front, towards the water way. The blue/green water with the cherry blossoms in the hills, was incredible to see!

We then walked back towards Saga-Arashiyama station.

On the way we ate some korokke or croquette in french. They were filled with mashed potato and bamboo shoots.

We then took the train back to Kyoto to transfer to the Nara Line for Fushimi Inari….