The Kyoto Cycling Tour Project

The Kyoto Cycling Tour Project (KCTP) allows you to tour around Kyoto in bicycle. There's a list of routes to choose from on their website and you can choose to go on the tour with a conductor or just rent the bicycles and go around Kyoto by yourselves. I picked the Kinkakuji Arashiyama Golden tour for us. It included the Golden Pavilion, the Ryoan Temple, the Hirosawa Pond and the town of Arashiyama. And because obviously, we didn't know our way around Kyoto, we requested for a tour guide. Our tour started at the Kinkakuji Cycling terminal which was in a small hotel. When we got to the hotel, we saw several bikes lined up at the parking lot and our guide, Naoko, was already there choosing our bikes for us. It's been a while since I last rode a bike - maybe when I was ten - so, I had to go on a few practice rounds on the road in front of the hotel before we started the tour. Our bikes had baskets on them, convenient to store our things and in my case, my too-big-to-carry camera.

Our first destination was the Golden Pavilion. I was most excited to see this because the images of the temple online looked amazing; I had to see it for myself. It was a good day. The sky was bright blue and you can see the golden hue of the temple really shine in the sunlight. Naoko told us all about the history of the temple and brought us around the temple grounds to be able to observe the temple in all angles.

As we walked around the temple, we saw these tiny stone statues with bowls in front of them. Naoko said that if you threw a coin straight into the bowl on your first try, your wish will come true. MM threw a coin without even aiming very hard and it went right in. Everyone around us were so amazed they clapped. I guess her wish will come true, or maybe it already did. :) I threw three coins and none of them went in, but Naoko reassured me that I would get another chance and so we moved on. Surely enough, we encountered two more bowls along the way. I didn't get any of my coins into the second bowl either. What can I say? I'm bad at aiming and very poor in estimating distance. Maybe I can blame it on my astigmatism? Anyway, the final bowl was just right in front of me so it was just like putting a coin into a coin bank, so I was finally able to get it in.

Our final view of the temple

One of the statues we saw around the temple

After a restroom break, we proceeded to our next destination. Passing through a local university and more residences, we arrived that the Ryoan temple, which is home to the popular rock garden. There were no shoes allowed inside the temple, so we stopped to take our shoes off by the entrance. Then, we chose a spot to sit on and viewed the rock garden while Naoko told us of the different stories regarding the arrangement of rocks before us. The rocks are arranged in such a way that no matter where you stand or sit, you won't be able to see all of the rocks at the same time. Some also say that the rocks stand for islands with ripples of water surrounding them.

We walked away from the rock garden to admire the beauty of the temple grounds. There were water lilies in a nearby pond and lots of trees and flowers. I don't remember very much of what we learned there, but one of the main purposes of this temple is for meditation so the atmosphere surrounding the temple was very peaceful.

Next, we rode through a lake and through rice paddies. This was after riding a through a residential area for about half an hour. There were very few cars in sight. Most people were riding their bicycles. Everywhere was quiet. We were riding with the wind in our faces; it felt wonderful. At one point I found myself wondering what it would be like living in that area. It must be nice as long as there aren't any earthquakes or typhoons. :) We took some pictures in the countryside and enjoyed the view. We saw scarecrows, statues by a lake and old ladies selling vegetables.

Then, we rode a bit more. By then, my butt was getting sore and I was getting tired of riding. It's a good thing we chose one of the shorter tours. I think there may have been tours that could last the whole day. I didn't realize biking could be so tiring. Naoko knew we were interested in trying out food that are well-known to Kyoto. She mentioned that Kyoto is known for tofu. So, we stpped by a shop that makes fresh tofu and got ourselves a small snack for 75 yen.

We entered the bamboo forest. There were so many people, it was difficult to ride the short pathway down the forest. I was expecting to see more of the forest, but only a small section is accessible to visitors.

The good thing about being on the KCTP is that we got to visit so many places in 3 hours. Since we were only in Kyoto for a couple of days, this worked really well for us. The presence of a tour guide also made things better because we got to learn more about the history of the places we saw (even though I had already forgotten most of it), instead of just taking pictures and being satisfied with just being there. We ended our tour in the small town of Arashiyama. If we weren't so hungry and eager to go back to the Kyoto station to have some sukiyaki, we would have stayed longer in Arashiyama. I didn't have any pictures of the town because we were on our bicycles the whole time, but as we were passing through, it reminded me a lot of Asakusa in Tokyo with the storefronts and rickshaw pullers.

The KCTP was probably the best experience we had in Japan. There's something different about touring in a bicycle that makes the experience special. However, the highlight of our tour was probably Naoko, our tour guide, who was very accommodating and pleasant to talk to. We could ask her anything about Kyoto and she would make sure to give us the answers we needed. If she didn't know the answer, she would pull out her phone and search for it online. And since we were having trouble looking for matcha salt the other day, we asked her where we could find it and she suggested the right place! Both of us went home with matcha salts in our bags that day :) She also made sure we were safe as we rode through the streets of Kyoto, always warning us not to cross the intersection or to slow down when there was a car or a "scooter."