Kyoto, Japan

Jennifer
Sep 15, 2024
4 min read

Updated: Oct 9, 2024

Tokyo is the capital of Japan; Kyoto is the cultural capital of Japan. Kyoto’s rich history, historical architecture, and beautiful shrines truly set it apart. It’s also very expensive to stay in compared to other Japanese cities, and has been somewhat overrun by tourists in the last few years. While I did not stay in Kyoto this trip, I did visit it several times throughout my travels and still find it as breathtaking as the first time I had ever been there.

I would have loved to stay in the city, but it wasn’t in the cards for us. Geographically, the Osaka and Kyoto area is very interesting. Osaka is an hour train ride from Kyoto, but Kyoto itself takes over an hour to cross by train. The urban sprawl is a bit wild here, leading to Kyoto being almost one hundred square kilometers bigger than Singapore*! So, while staying in Osaka to visit Kyoto seemed to make logistical sense while planning, it did not pan out in reality.

It’s important to imagine Kyoto as four quadrants: north, south, east, and west. And that these quadrants are about an hour apart each, so doing them in one day would be unrealistic. The North has Kinkaku-Ji, which is a famous Buddhist temple covered in gold leaf and sometimes referred to as the Golden Pavilion. We did manage to squeeze in seeing this (not sure how, if I’m honest), and it’s alright. It’s a gorgeous post card picture, but it’s very out of the way. There’s also Ryoan-Ji, another Buddhist zen garden, and Nijo Castle, but we didn’t visit either of these.

East Kyoto is where the famous geisha district, Gion, is located. The city’s most famous temples and landmarks reside here, and the area is known for its machiya houses, tea houses, and winding alleyways. Geisha still wander the streets of Gion, but there are no photography zones and I’ve heard rumors of no tourist zones as well. These entertainers are working and typically traveling from their houses to their shows, and tourists can interfere with their movement and work. I’m depressed, but not surprised, with what they have to put up with. While we didn’t glimpse a peak of them and I couldn’t find time to reserve a show, we did wonder around and purchase super cute umbrellas.

West Kyoto is known for Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, which you have very likely seen on Instagram or TikTok. It is a very nice, curated bamboo forest with a bridge and a park. I was worried that it wouldn't be more than a kilometer long Instagram backdrop, so I ended up not prioritizing it this trip and missing it altogether. There’s also the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Tenrup-Ji, a Buddhist temple with a world-renowned garden. and a monkey park somewhere in the mountains nearby. We didn’t manage to make it to western Kyoto at all during this trip, though I would love to hike around Arashiyama and Iwatayama someday.

South Kyoto has the Kyoto Railway Museum, To-Ji Buddhist temple with a five-story pagoda, Fushimi sake district, and what the area and most of Kyoto is known for, Fushimi Inari Taisha, the shrine of ten thousand gates. While we didn’t seem to make it to most things in Kyoto somehow, we did visit Fushimi Inari Taisha, twice. I had read somewhere that the shrine can be visited during the day – and at night! The shrine itself does not close and the majority of the paths are illuminated, so it’s actually possible to hike through the thousands of torii gates and up to the top of the mountain after sunset. Many articles online recommended it as a way to beat the heat and avoid crowds. Since most of our days in Japan had seen over 95 degree weather, David and I figured it would be worth a try. But I am also collecting goshuin (shrine stamps), so we decided to we would go twice, and determine what was best for ourselves.

Well. There is nothing as visually striking as ten thousand bright red gates in the emerald green mountainside of Japan. Sometimes pathways would wonder off to the side where little stone foxes would come out and play, ball and scroll in mouth. Little rivers would cut through the ancient stone and amongst the gates, some large and craned over pathways, others small and tucked in hidden outcroppings. The sun didn’t bare down on us through the slits in the torii, but the hot air did hang stagnant in the corridors. If I didn’t bring an electric fan, my corpse may have been left up there to play ball with the fox. The path widened at one point to reveal a scenic overlook of Kyoto. The “summit” of the mountain itself was written on a piece of paper and propped up against one of the shrines along the gated pathway and could not have been more lackluster in the grandiose of all else there.

And at night? The striking red of the gates against the mountainside is dulled, the shops and shrine long since closed, and the heat still heavy and sticky in the air. You can no longer grab an ice cream or kakiguri** along the different paths or step into a store to view the different shrine tokens that they offer. The view of Kyoto lit up at night is really cool, however. I probably wouldn’t summit the mountain or complete the loop trail, but the Kyoto overlook lit up was pretty stellar. There were still people milling about, though admittedly not as many, but I would definitely all around recommend going during the day. Also, the ema or wooden wish boards, are much neater at the shops along the trail that at the main shrine.