Honestly, the bamboo "forest" isn't worth a visit. I wonder if they post this news just to attract more tourists. The same story has been posted year after year.

It's just a place where someone once planted a lot of bamboo thinking they'd need it as a ressource. They didn't need it so they just left it there.

It dates back about a thousand years, so I guess it's "natural" now, but it's basically the remains of a human made plantation, albeit old.

The famous path through it is about a hundred meters long and a great spot to take that photo. I didn't feel immersed in the forest at all, because the entry and exit is visible through the entire "attraction".

There's a nice temple with an impressive garden close by and some random rich rock star dude also build a mansion with a garden on top of the mountain next to the forest, and that's it.

The whole thing felt like the kind of place that you only want to go if you're a tourist with nothing better to do.

Kyoto is still worth visiting as a whole. The thousand gates on mt. Inari is a much better use of your time.