7 Days in Kyoto: A Slower Way to Explore Japan

Most first time visitors treat Kyoto as a stop between Tokyo and somewhere else. Two days, ten temples, a quick photo at the torii gates. It works, in the way that skimming a novel works.

Give the mornings to the famous places

Kyoto's best sights are also its most crowded. The answer is not to skip them but to move your clock. Fushimi Inari at first light is a different place from Fushimi Inari at noon, and the bamboo grove at Arashiyama is close to silent before the first train from the city.

Be somewhere famous when the doors open, and somewhere ordinary by the time everyone else arrives.

Spend the afternoons with people

The city's real depth is in its workshops, tea rooms, and small restaurants run by the same family for generations. Book one afternoon a day for something with a person attached: a textile studio, a lesson in preparing tea, a walk with someone who grew up in the neighborhood.

Leave one day empty

The single best decision you can make in a week is to plan nothing on day five. Walk without a map. Sit by the Kamo river with a coffee. Kyoto pays back attention, and attention needs room.

Where to stay

Base yourself in a small property near the river rather than by the station. You lose ten minutes on the way to the temples and gain a city you can walk in the evening.

A week is enough to feel the pace of the place without feeling rushed out of it. It is the trip we recommend most often to travelers who say they have already done Japan.