Ayabe City: The Floral Town of Kyoto – Cycling & Driving Routes

Ayabe Gunze Square consists of three facilities, Ayabe Specialty Store, Gunze Museums, and Ayabe Rose Garden. People who visit Ayabe's Gunze Square will have plenty to do, from touring the flower garden, to visiting the museums dedicated to Ayabe's role in Japanese history. There is also a specialty goods shop selling Ayabe products, as well as an area to get tourist information and a café. The square is expansive and a great place to relax. It is also within walking distance to a lot of Ayabe's downtown sites, including the train station.

Witness the beauty of 1,200 roses in full bloom during the spring and autumn seasons. Don't miss the "Spring Rose Festival," held from mid-May to mid-June, celebrating this floral spectacle.

Visit the Ayabe Specialty Goods Market, where you'll find a wide selection of local souvenirs, including fresh produce, processed foods, and handcrafted items. Be sure to stop by and explore the unique offerings of Ayabe.

Known for its premium tea, Ayabe offers a special treat at Ayacha Café with Gyokuro tasting. Relish the exquisite Gyokuro tea, celebrated in national competitions, and savor the tea leaves for a truly memorable experience.

Gyokuro Set (with sweets): 800 yen

At Yuzuki, guests can enjoy seasonal kaiseki course meals, hot pot dishes, summer-only beer gardens, and other meals made with seasonal Kyoto ingredients. The large garden reflects the changing faces of the season—from cherry blossoms, to deep green, to colored leaves, to white snow—and the elegant dining room offers an out-of-the-ordinary experience for guests, with flowers arranged by the chef himself, "as if they were in the field." Available drinks include draft beer, Japanese sake, shochu, cocktails, non-alcoholic beverages, and authentic coffee.

Ayabe Onsen Nio-no-yu, surrounded by the nature of Kanbayashi in Ayabe, is a natural hot spring that boasts a rich and incredibly effective set of hot spring ingredients that is one of the finest in kyoto. Nio-no-yu has a large hot spring bathtub, medicated bath, open-air bath, and sauna, as well as a medicated bath and open-air bath that contains various kinds of crude drugs. At the restaurant of the accommodation facility Nio-kan, you can enjoy the unique taste of the mountain village. Adjacent to Nio Park, there is also a ground golf course and tennis court, which make it a leisure spot where families can stay to relax.

You'll find Komyo-ji Temple on a mountain slope in the forests of Ayabe City. It was said to have been founded by the legendary Prince Shotoku (572-622). The temple's main Niomon Gate was constructed in 1248 and was designated as a National Treasure in 1954. The gate has a gabled roof with rare shingles that aren't commonly found in Japan. The temple and gate are along walking trails just up the road from Ayabe Onsen. These trails lead to a great horse chestnut tree, which is estimated to be nearly 2,000 years old.

Oitomi is a town in Ayabe City in the north of Kyoto Prefecture, where there's a forest with dense fields of oriental paperbush (mitsumata) and fringed iris (shaga, Iris Japonica) flowers. These fields were discovered in 2015 by a photographer, and are a rare and beautiful sight. From the end of March to mid-April a sea of oriental paperbush flowers bloom and cover about 1.5 hectares of land. Oriental paperbush is a deciduous shrub that grows 1-2 meters tall, with little scented yellow flowers which are made up of four sepals with no petals, and a fibrous bark that has historically been used as material for washi (Japanese paper) and paper money. From the end of April until mid-May, after the oriental paperbush season, the mysterious-looking, snow white fringed iris bloom and cover the forest floor. In some parts of the forest, there's also a 400 meter-long "corridor of irises." The flowers are short-lived and last just a single day, but every day new flowers bloom to replace them. During the flowering season from the end of March to mid-May, you can also find local goods, tea, coffee, and sweet red bean-based soup at the Hanayadori rest area, which is open on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.. While you don't need to hike to see the flowers, the forest is not paved please make your visit in shoes you don't mind dirtying.