Kyoto’s oldest surviving building isn’t at Kiyomizu-dera or Kinkaku-ji — it’s a five-story pagoda finished in 951, standing quietly on the grounds of a temple most first-time visitors never make it to. Daigo-ji sits far enough from the city center that it gets skipped in favor of the bigger names, which is exactly why its…
Kyoto has a reputation for being the expensive stop on a Japan trip — all ryokan and kaiseki dinners and taxi rides between temples. It can absolutely be that trip. It can also be a genuinely cheap one, and most visitors end up somewhere in between without ever quite deciding which trip they’re taking. That’s…
Every first-time visitor to Kyoto hits the same wall at some point: standing at a bus stop, staring at a route map with more numbers than a phone bill, wondering whether they should just give up and call a taxi. I remember watching a couple do exactly that near Kyoto Station a while back —…
Eikan-do’s formal name is Zenrin-ji, but almost nobody in Kyoto calls it that. Locals know it as ‘Momiji no Eikandō’ — Eikan-do of the maple leaves — and in November the temple backs up that reputation with one of the densest concentrations of maple trees in the city, wrapped around a pond and connected by…
Chion-in’s Sanmon gate is the largest wooden temple gate in Japan, and it announces the temple before you even reach the grounds — visible from well down the street in Higashiyama. The temple is the headquarters of the Jōdo-shū school of Buddhism, founded in 1234 on the site where the monk Hōnen spent his final…
Kyoto has been Japan’s crafts capital since it was the imperial capital, and centuries of demand from the court and the city’s tea houses left behind a concentration of workshops that no other Japanese city can match. Three trades in particular define the city’s reputation: Nishijin-ori silk weaving, Kiyomizu-yaki pottery, and Kyo-yuzen dyeing. This guide…
Gion Matsuri is Kyoto’s most famous festival and one of the three great festivals of Japan — a month-long series of rites, music, and processions held every July and centered on Yasaka Shrine. It began in 869 as a purification ritual to ward off plague, and more than a thousand years later it still draws…
Kodai-ji was built by a widow for her husband — Nene, wife of the legendary warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, founded this temple in 1606 to pray for his soul, and the two are buried here together. Today it is better known for something Nene never saw: a stone garden and bamboo grove that get lit up…
You can see To-ji’s five-story pagoda from the shinkansen platform at Kyoto Station, and at 57 meters, it is the tallest wooden pagoda in Japan — the unofficial skyline marker for the entire city. Despite sitting closer to the station than almost any other major sight in Kyoto, it gets a fraction of the crowds…
Thirty minutes north of central Kyoto on a single train line, the mountain village of Kurama and the neighboring shrine town of Kifune feel like a different country from the temple-packed streets around Kyoto Station. The two are connected by an hour-long forest hike over the mountain, which makes them one of the few day…