Japan in 7 Days: The Honest First-Timer Route
Tokyo, Hakone and Kyoto in a week, with realistic travel times, why adding a fourth city breaks it, and whether the rail pass pays for itself on a trip this short.
Every guide tagged Kyoto, for a trip to Japan.
Tokyo, Hakone and Kyoto in a week, with realistic travel times, why adding a fourth city breaks it, and whether the rail pass pays for itself on a trip this short.
The northern mountain villages, the temples nobody queues for and the neighbourhoods that still feel lived in, plus how to fit them around the famous sights rather than instead of them.
The old teahouse quarter of Kyoto, its lanes and canal, what a geiko and a maiko actually are, and the etiquette the district now enforces on its private streets.
Four hundred metres of covered lane a block off Shijo, over a hundred shopfronts, and one point of etiquette that catches out almost every first time visitor.
How to do Kyoto without the crowds swallowing you: the temples worth your time, the geisha district of Gion, a day-by-day plan, and the etiquette to get right.
Kyoto's western hills hold a bamboo path that is famous and short, a monkey mountain, a river of boats and a temple garden that has been unchanged since the fourteenth century.
Kyoto has around sixteen hundred temples and you will see six: which six, why the torii tunnel needs a dawn start, and how to avoid the two hour bus queue.