enchanted forest

My favorite place in Kyoto (one of my favorite places in all of Japan) was the bamboo forest in Arashiyama on the northwest edge of the city.
Ten minutes down a perpetually shady road is the villa of a famous silent film star named Okoochi Denjiro.

It was so relaxing to tour his beautiful gardens and enjoy tea looking out into the bamboo.

mine is bigger than yours

I never did finish showing you my trip to Japan. There are just two more cities left. The first place that we visited in Kyoto was the Shogunate Palace. The Shogun spent most of his time in Tokyo, but wanted to show the Emperor who was really boss, and so he build a huge palace designed to make anyone who entered feel small. It was built as a fortress against his enemies as well, with special floor boards that sing like mocking birds when you walk on them. There was no sneaking up on the Shogun.
Everything is on a grand scale, covered in gold leaf and intricate hand carvings. There are beautiful murals throughout the palace on the rice paper walls, but we weren't allowed to take pictures (they want you to buy them). Skilled artists were in the middle of restoring the murals while we were there. Rice paper walls and thatch roofs are not impervious to fluctuations in temperature and moisture, and so these paintings must be restored on a regular basis.
The gardens around the palace looked too good to be true. They were perfectly balanced and so serene - just like a painting.

There were carp and turtles in the moat, expansive lawns that we weren't allowed to walk on, and numerous shops near the exit selling tasty treats and tacky souvenirs.