Kyoto Beyond the Temple List: Arashiyama's Bamboo Grove and Higashiyama's Old Streets

The Arashiyama Bamboo Grove is a few hundred meters of path through towering bamboo — free to walk, open around the clock, genuinely striking, and genuinely crowded by mid-morning, so an early visit (before 8am if you can manage it) makes a real difference. The Togetsukyo Bridge over the Katsura River nearby is a good photo stop, and Iwatayama Monkey Park, a short climb up the hillside, has wild macaques and a lookout over the city; as of 2026 it's roughly ¥800 for adults and ¥400 for children, cash only, open 9am–4pm (closed on some heavy-rain/snow days), so bring coins rather than relying on a card.

This area works best as a half-day: bamboo grove, a temple or two (Tenryu-ji's garden is the standout, and is UNESCO-listed), then the monkey park if you have energy left for the climb.

Sannenzaka and Ninenzaka are sloped, stone-paved streets lined with old wooden shopfronts leading up toward Kiyomizu-dera — one of the most reliably photogenic stretches in the city, which also means it's busy most of the day. Continue north and you reach Gion, Kyoto's most famous geiko (geisha) and maiko district, with Hanamikoji its main street.

A real etiquette note: geiko and maiko are working professionals commuting to appointments, not photo props. Don't block their path, don't grab or touch them, and don't follow them down side streets. Harassment from tourists got bad enough that Kyoto now enforces this with money: photographing anyone on Gion's private side streets has carried a ¥10,000 fine since 2019, and since spring 2024 a handful of specific alleys around southern Gion (Kosode Koji among them) are off-limits to non-residents entirely, marked with multilingual signs. Roughly 90% of Gion — Hanamikoji, the Shirakawa canal area, the main temples — remains fully open to visitors; it's only the narrow residential lanes that are restricted. If you want a posed photo with someone in costume, book a kimono/henshin studio experience instead.