Bamboo

The weather was pleasant enough to do something outside, so I decided to got to the Arashiyama bamboo forest. I had never seen a whole bamboo forest before and was correspondingly curious. Also I pictured myself meandering between the bamboo culms in peaceful seclusion, maybe getting inspired about writing a haiku.

However, I couldn't have been further off the mark. Already at the subway station Arashiyama it was all quite busy. All disembarking passengers headed in the same direction as me. The road led to a series of crowded food and souvenier stalls.

The road continued into the bamboo forest, gated by a fence to both sides, keeping men and plants strictly separated and the reason for this was quite obvious. The road was packed with hundreds of people. If they all were wandering through the bamboo forest it would have been gone alltogether long time ago.

Still it was quite impressive to see the endlessly long but slim bamboo culms. And they are so useful to make all sorts of things out of them. Furniture, drinking vessels, panpipes, fountains and even whole scaffoldings. And of course you can also eat the sprouts.

In the forest there is also the Nonomiya shrine which seems to be quite popular and apparently the actual reason for the most visitors to come to Arashiyama.