We arrived at Arashiyama and walked towards the bamboo grove entrance. So many bamboo trees. We tried getting photos of us alone and not with the other tourists, not too easy to do We continued walking and then we saw the real grove. When we first walked in, I have to admit to being slightly disappointed. Yes, there were many bamboo trees, but there were also other trees interspersed among them. It ruined it for me, on different levels. On the first level, I thought I would be seeing only bamboo. On the second level, it didnt fit with my thoughts on Japanese culture and what I had learned thus far. I expected a grove keeper to go around the grounds all day picking out all the non-bamboo saplings. We continued walking and as we entered the second part of the grove my impression improved immensely. Everywhere we looked - bamboo. That's what I had in mind when reading about the bamboo grove. Not that the first part was disappointing but the second part was sooo much better. Pure bamboo - everywhere. And so tall - all you can see right, left and up is bamboo.
Here too we thought we would get bombarded by fellow tourists, but as you can see from the photos, it wasnt that bad. Or at least thats how it was while we were there. As we were leaving to go to the monkey mountain the tourist buses arrived and with them the hoards of people.
Someone "up there" is smiling on us on our honeymoon and making sure we enjoy ourselves - thank you :)
We crossed the bridge towards the mountains and were stopped by the beautiful scenery around us. 
The leaves are changing colours at different stages.
We continued up the mountain to another fun afternoon of climbing in humid humid weather.
I dont know how many stairs there were but we got to 160 meters height.
We finally got up to the top of the mountain. I had to push Ori up the last few steps cause he just couldnt handle the stairs anymore (hehe). But it was worth the climb. Not only are the monkeys crazy cool, observing them in their natural habitat was lots of fun. Contrary to other animal observation sights, such as the zoo, it is the humans who are in the closed quarters and the monkeys are on the outside. In order to see them upclose, we had to step into a hut in the middle of the top of the hill. The windows were all covered with nets of which the holes are only big enough for the monkeys to stick in their hands. Role reversal at its finest. We bought a bag of cut bananas and got to feed them. COOOOLLL. Everyone got super excited once one of the monkeys picked up the banana or peanut straight out of their hands - from the very young to the old (yes much older than Ori and I).
The view of the city was all open to us. Too bad it was still a bit overcast so we couldnt see too clearly.
Climbing down was much easier.
As we got down it started to drizzle a bit and when we got on the bus to the city centre it began to really pour. We decided it was the perfect time to go visiting the Nishiki Market (fully covered).
Think Carmel Market only much cleaner, more organized, no one screaming, and lots of unidentified animals and fruits on sale. Im sure that there was a time when this was a local market, but i dont imagine it can be called that anymore. There were very few Japanese people walking around, and I imagine that those that were there were also tourists. It was very upscale and aimed at tourists.
Walking about, we were offered a try of jelly candies, the kind used for tea ceremonies. The owner asked us where we're from and when we told him Israel, he immediately smiled and said - shalom, toda, lehitraot. He then went to the back where he took out a booklet, and asked us to wait. He found the right page and started reading - hayom, etmol, machar, and counting in numbers in hebrew. Turns out it was a phrase book in many different languages.
Well, as we taught the vendor - machar is another day.
Tomorrow to Fushimi-Inari - the temple made of a thousand Torri (yup, turns out I've been spelling it wrong all this time. Oops.)
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