Day 12 - Monday May 1, 2017 -
Today we’re planning on visiting Kurama and Kibune, described as “a pair of tranquil rural villages an easy and scenic 30-minute train ride north of Kyoto on the Eizan Line.”
We took the subway up to Karasuma Oike, changed to the Tozai line to Sanjo, and then the Keihan line to Demachiyanagi, to get the Eizan line ‘scenic train’ to Kurama. The train turned out to be a small, two carriage affair with some of the seats turned to face the window (hence ‘scenic’). It ended up being standing-room only, though we were early enough to get seats. The train runs every 20 minutes but as we’d got there about 15 minutes beforehand (just potluck) we were ahead of the latecomers.
The Inside Kyoto website describes it thus:-
“Tucked into the mountains north of Kyoto, Kurama and Kibune feel like worlds away. Surrounded by forested mountains, these two quaint villages will ease your soul after spending too long among the neon and concrete of the city below. The premier attraction is Kurama-dera, a mountaintop temple with great views. Combine a visit here with a walk over the mountain to the village of Kibune.”
“The easy [my emphasis] hike from Kurama to Kibune, in the hills north of Kyoto, is our favorite half-day trip out of Kyoto City. It’s the perfect combination of nature and culture.”
OK, mountaintop temple, walk over the mountain to Kibune …. I got that – but who in their right mind could describe this walk as easy? If you’re a twentysomething regular mountain runner, maybe this is indeed towards the ‘easy’ end of the spectrum; however, if you’re a somewhat sedentary 60+ year old, ‘strenuous’ would be more like it.
The walk up the mountain to Kurama-dera took us about an hour. An endless series of steps that just kept going and going … and going. After we got to Kurama-dera, it took us another 30 mnutes or so to reach the top of the mountain. You’ll see below that there are lots of photos going up but only one coming down. Going up, we’d stop and take a photo and catch our breath. It was all wide, concrete steps so ‘easy’ walking in that sense, they just kept going up and up and up…. Coming down was a different matter. After an initial run of some flatter, awkwardly spaced concrete steps, the path deteriorated into an endless procession of wooden steps or tree roots, at awkward and irregular angles with varying heights. For the young and nimble, scampering down this path may be easy but for the rest of us, self-preservation kicked in and our attention was focussed only on not twisting an ankle or tripping over as we negotiated this interminable, seemingly endless series of steps. “Unpleasant” doesn’t begin to describe it – it was utterly interminable and we just wanted it to end. Eventually it did but by the time we got down, we were past caring about any of the restaurants to be found in Kibune, (pleasant and plentiful though they appeared to be). After finding the ever-present vending machine to sell us a bottle of water, we walked the 2 kms down the road, alongside the river, to Kibuneguchi (the stop before Kurama) to get the train back to town.
The train line to Kurama and Kibune is like a letter Y, with Kurama at the top right, Kibune at the top left and Kibuneguchi (effectively the station for Kibune) at the junction of the two arms. To get the train from Kibune, you walk the 2 kms down to Kibuneguchi (or go twice as far, back over the mountain to Kurama). There is a bus service from Kibune to Kibuneguchi but we opted to walk (along the river = more or less flat), figuring that, based on the train times, the line of people waiting for the bus wouldn’t get any earlier train than we would if we just walked down. We had to wait about 10 minutes for the train and then re-traced our steps to get back to the hotel.
One thing that did surprise us on the train going up was the number of people who got off at Kibuneguchi. One can only assme they were planning to walk (or get the bus) up to Kibune but whether just to visit Kibune or whether to walk up the mountain in the reverse direction, I don’t know. In hindsight, a better way to do this would be to take the train to Kurama, take the hour or so to walk up to Kurama-dera, turn around and walk back down (hopefully a bit quicker), take the train one stop back to Kibuneguchi and get the bus up to Kibune. Have lunch in one of the restaurants and then walk (or take the bus) back down to Kibuneguchi for the train home.