Kyoto

Why Kyoto works

Kyoto served as Japan's capital for over a thousand years, and it remains the country's most complete window into pre-modern Japanese culture, its temples, shrines, and traditional wooden machiya townhouses spared the bombing that reshaped much of urban Japan during the Second World War. Fushimi Inari Taisha's thousands of vermillion torii gates climb the wooded slopes of Mount Inari in an unbroken tunnel, dedicated by individuals and businesses over centuries seeking the blessing of the rice deity Inari. Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, sheathed in gold leaf and reflected in its still garden pond, remains one of Japan's most photographed buildings, while Kiyomizu-dera's wooden stage, built without a single nail, juts out from a hillside over a valley of maple trees. Gion, Kyoto's historic geisha district, preserves a grid of wooden teahouses and lantern-lit lanes where geiko and maiko can occasionally be glimpsed hurrying between appointments at dusk. Arashiyama's bamboo grove, its towering stalks filtering light into a green haze, sits near the Tenryu-ji temple's Zen garden, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its own right. Kyoto's kaiseki cuisine — a multi-course meal built around seasonal ingredients and refined presentation — represents Japanese fine dining at its most disciplined, best experienced in a traditional ryokan setting alongside a soak in a hinoki wood bath.

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