People come to Arashiyama for the bamboo, and they leave with the memory of a garden. Tenryu-ji, the great Zen temple at the foot of the hills on the west side of Kyoto, was founded in 1339 by the shogun Ashikaga Takauji, who built it to console the spirit of the emperor Go-Daigo, his former rival. The garden, designed by the Zen master Muso Soseki, is older than almost every other thing you will see in the area: a pond with rocks arranged like a mountain landscape, with the hills of Arashiyama pulled into the view as borrowed scenery. It has survived fire after fire, though most of the halls themselves are later rebuilds.
Beside the temple's north gate you step directly into the famous bamboo grove, a cool, green corridor where the stems rise far overhead and clatter softly in the wind. It is busy from mid-morning, so the best time to see it is before eight. Beyond, the Katsura river runs wide and slow below the Togetsukyo bridge, and old boatmen still take visitors on the rapids upstream at Hozu. In November the hills around turn red and gold.
For a rider, the interest here lies in the roads that lead out of Arashiyama. Behind the temple, the Kyoto hills rise into forest, and the Shuzan Kaido, now Route 162, climbs north toward Takao and Keihoku, a road that follows a river valley through cedar plantations and tiny villages, with a pleasant mix of bends and gentle gradients. On weekdays it is quiet, and on warm weekends it fills with cyclists and groups of riders heading for the mountain restaurants. This ride, though, heads south to the Fujiwara palace site near Kashihara, crossing the whole of Kyoto and then the border into Nara.
In Arashiyama itself, the main street is lined with cafes, sweet shops, and stands selling tofu, matcha ice cream and pickles. Petrol stations are on the main roads around the district, but within the tourist area, parking for bikes can be hard to find, so try the car parks at the edge. It is a ride best savoured slowly, with a good coffee, because the temple repays attention. Spring and autumn are the most beautiful seasons, but also the busiest, while winter brings a rare quiet and the occasional dusting of snow.