日帰り旅行 － 鞍馬と貴船

Well I didn't end up going to Nagano. Aaron, Andy and Masahiro are there right now though. They found a pretty good deal. 20,000 for 2 days of skiing/snowboarding with a hotel for one night and a bus from Kyoto to Nagano. There were only 3 tickets left for the bus and since I didn't really want to ski, but just wanted to see Nagano I had to pass on it. On the positive side it let me study up and work on one of my papers for class.

Today, Sebastian and I took the train up to the Kurama and Kibune area of Kyoto. It's been a pretty popular area this year thanks to this years NHK taiga drama, Yoshitsune. According to the story, Yoshitsune was born just before a battle in which his father and oldest two brothers were killed. His life was spared and he was put under the care of Kurama Temple. While in Kurama he was trained by tengu and later went on to fight in the Genpei War. Unfortunately he was betrayed by a cousin and died young.

The Kurama Temple area is really large and is comprised of four major shrines along with a bunch of smaller ones sprinkled throughout a mountain forest. You can actually get off the train at Kurama station and walk through the entire forest to the Kibune area. There are also a couple of Shinto shrines nearby as well which makes the area a great day trip from Kyoto. Today there was still quite a bit of snow left up there, but it was melting so it made for some nice pictures along with some fairly pleasant weather.

Kurama and Kibune are both really small and are both completely surrounded by mountains. Kurama has an onsen which is supposedly really nice and fairly cheap at 1000 yen. Kibune has a lot of nice, but expensive restaurants and ryokan. The main, and only road actually runs right alongside a picturesque river and, if you've got the cash to drop, I'm sure it would be a great place to spend a summer night.