Arashiyama Bamboo and Riverside

The Togetsukyō Bridge spans the Katsura River with a clean, low profile of wood and reinforced concrete. Its name translates to the Moon Crossing Bridge, inspired by an emperor who watched the full moon appear to travel across the sky…

Tenryu-ji is distinguished by a fourteenth-century garden that survived fires and wars largely intact. Muso Soseki designed these grounds to incorporate the distant ridges of Arashiyama into the landscape, framing the mountains as if they…

Black, bark-covered torii gates stand at the entrance of Nonomiya-jinja, a style rarely seen in modern shrines. This small shrine sits deep within the Arashiyama bamboo grove. Centuries ago, imperial princesses chosen to serve at the Ise…

Towering green stalks of bamboo sway above the path, creating a canopy that filters the sunlight into a soft, filtered glow. This grove is part of the former villa grounds of the monk Muso Soseki, who founded the nearby Tenryu-ji temple in…

The gate to Okochi Sanso sits nestled into the hillside, marked by the weathered stone walls that transition into a sprawling, multi-leveled villa and garden complex. Denjiro Okochi, a silent film star from the nineteen twenties, spent…

The Arashiyama Park viewpoint sits on a hillside ledge overlooking the Hozugawa River. It holds a collection of cherry trees planted in the early twentieth century by the local government to encourage tourism after the area served for…

Rankyo Gorge is a jagged canyon carved by the Hozugawa River where the water creates a sharp S-curve against towering rock faces. Its distinctive feature is the sheer cliff walls that rise abruptly from the riverbed, often colored by dense…