Japan 2019

Saturday16November

We leave the restaurant and quickly find ourselves on the large pedestrian street leading to Togetsukyō Bridge, which provides access to Arashiyama Park. It's crowded. The park is very popular, especially since it's Saturday, so Kyoto residents come here to enjoy some greenery.

Temples are also found in Arashiyama. The ideal opportunity to wear your most beautiful kimono.  

Girls don't have a monopoly on traditional clothing; boys also wear kimonos, which will always be more sober than those of the female gender.

Here we are on the Togetsukyō Bridge or 渡月橋? in Japanese... translated as "moon-crossing bridge". This wooden bridge spans the Katsura River.

One of the park's attractions is its Iwatayama hill, home to a colony of about a hundred macaques.

The panorama of Kyoto from the summit of Iwatayama hill.

And here is one of the inhabitants of the place, the Japanese macaque, Macaca fuscata. As its name indicates, this monkey is only found in Japan.

At the top of the hill, it's possible to give some peanuts to our primate cousins by entering a kind of large cage that keeps the macaques outside. And that's how the trap closed on the human species and the uprising of monkeys on the planet began...    

The red color of the muzzle (slightly accentuated by my camera settings) is a social indicator within the group. Lucky you if your face is redder than your peers, it will be easier for you to gain respect!   And unlike rhesus macaques, the redness of the face does not change with fertility periods, leaving a little more mystery to seduction, from the male's point of view anyway.  

Inside the human hut/cage.  

The macaques' ischial callosities, the ingenious system for sitting for hours!  

Sitting for hours, but for what? To groom their little friends, of course...

The young remain dependent on their mother for the entire first year of their lives.

Before leaving, I take one last photo. Anthropomorphism or not, I clearly saw his finger and I don't know if I should take it as a personal message...  

Back to Togetsukyo Bridge and the Katsura River, overrun by couples in an irrepressible need to flex their little arms...  

The large pedestrian street is always busy

After the boat ride, the essential stop for couples is the Arashiyama bamboo grove.

Some paths pass through about ten hectares of these tubular giants. By carriage if you feel like it.

These are Moso bamboos (Phyllostachys edulis) that can exceed 25 meters. During the growth phase, the shoot can grow 1 meter per day!  

Whether you stroll in a kimono or not, a photo amidst the thousands of vertical lines is a must.  

The diameter can reach 20 centimeters.

It's past 4 PM. Night is falling, it's time to head back to central Kyoto.

Not far from the hotel, a Renault 4L seems to have undergone a spatio-temporal teleportation from 1960s France... Google Street View confirms to me, in any case, that it hasn't moved from its spot since at least 2009...  

A short night stroll along the Kamo River, lined with glass-fronted restaurant rooms where diners innocently eat under the gaze of passers-by.

The stroll continues in the Pontocho district, where its picturesque alley, lined with restaurants, paper lanterns, and sinogram signs, immerses us in Japan as the West imagines it.

The street leads to Kyoto updated in 2.0 mode, with wide streets, traffic lights, and large shops...

But in Japan, the modern always merges with the traditional, and from the street opposite, a music school makes a strange melody resonate...

Thus ends the Kyoto stage! Tomorrow, we continue the road towards the North of the country where we can find nature far from bitumen and cars...