Kyoto

Kyoto was the capital of Japan from 794 to 1868, which is why people call it the thousand-year capital. Around 1.46 million people lived here in 2020, making it the ninth most populous city in the country, spread across eleven wards on a grid that is easy to read and easy to walk. There are roughly 2,000 temples and shrines, and seventeen historic monuments were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage in 1994. That is the trap and the pleasure of the place: you cannot see it all, so pick two or three sites a day and leave room for the streets in between.

Kyoto Station is the hub and the practical base: everything leaves from here and the hotels are plentiful. Higashiyama, the eastern hills, is where the old streets, Kiyomizu-dera and Gion are, and sleeping there buys you empty lanes early in the morning, before the buses arrive. Downtown around Nishiki market puts you next to the food and the bars. Arashiyama and its bamboo grove sit far enough west to feel like a day trip rather than a base. Fushimi Inari and its tunnels of torii gates are to the south, Kinkaku-ji and its Golden Pavilion to the north-west, and the Philosopher's Path links a string of quieter temples in between. Wherever you stay, Kyoto City has charged a revised accommodation tax since 1 March 2026, from ¥200 to ¥10,000 per person per night depending on the room rate, so check whether your quote includes it.

The shinkansen from Tokyo takes around 2.5 hours and stops at Kyoto Station. From Kansai International Airport, the Haruka limited express reaches the same station in about 1 hour 20 minutes. Osaka is fifteen minutes away by shinkansen, which makes a day trip in either direction easy. Inside the city, buses reach the famous temples and are reliably crowded, the two subway lines are quick where they go, and a bicycle is the local answer on a flat grid. A Suica or Pasmo IC card taps you through trains, buses and konbini, so you rarely handle coins.

Cherry blossom arrives late March into April and the autumn colour from late October to early December, and Kyoto is where everyone wants to see both, so book early, start at dawn. The rainy season, tsuyu, covers most of the country from early June to mid-July, and typhoons cross the islands from June to December, peaking from July to September. Winter is dry and clear on the Pacific side, and the temples are at their emptiest.

Goodbars sells a Japan eSIM you install at home and switch on when you land. It runs on NTT docomo, Japan's largest mobile network by mobile contracts, and our Japan coverage page shows where it reaches and what independent speed tests measure; what we can say is that you are online walking out of arrivals, which is exactly when you need to be.