Sixteen hundred temples. You have four days.
Which Gion walk finds a maiko on her way to work. What a tea ceremony under Kiyomizu costs. Whether Fushimi Inari is better before breakfast or after dinner. Reviews of every tour you can book in Kyoto.
Gion at dusk, a tea room under Kiyomizu, the bamboo before the coaches.
The four bookings a first Kyoto itinerary hangs off. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first eveningKyoto Geisha Walking Tour: Gion District & Hidden GemsHanamikoji after the lanterns come on, when the wooden fronts are lit and the tea houses are opening. Two hours, and the geisha quarter finally makes sense.
02The tea hourTea Ceremony in a Traditional Tea House in KiyomizuA full ceremony in a tea house below Kiyomizu, kneeling optional. The one hour of the trip when nobody reaches for a phone.
03The west morningKyoto Arashiyama Walking Tour: Bamboo, Monkeys, Gardens & SecretsBamboo, the macaque hill and the temple gardens behind it, walked before the coaches unload. Take the first train out of Kyoto Station.
04The torii climbFushimi Inari Hidden Hiking Tour (Private Option Available)Past the crowded lower gates and up into the cedar, where the vermilion thins out and the small shrines start.
Gion works at dusk: lanterns on, tea houses opening, cameras down.
The geisha quarters are the one part of Kyoto that runs on an evening timetable. Three ways to spend it, what it costs to join each, and which lanes they walk.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · Kyoto Geisha Walking Tour: Gion District & Hidden Gems
Geisha and maikoThe five flower towns explained by someone who knows the houses.
Gion after darkHanamikoji, the Shirakawa canal and the back lanes with the lanterns lit.
Kimono for the dayDressed properly by ten, photographed on the Higashiyama steps by four.
All 52 evenings in the geisha quarters →
Six Kyoto neighbourhoods, and the best day out in each.
Wooden tea houses on the east bank, a bamboo hillside in the west, a mountain wrapped in vermilion to the south, and a tea town twenty minutes down the Nara line.
Kyoto keeps seventeen World Heritage sites and no sensible way to see them all.
The gold pavilion floats on its pond, the torii tunnel climbs a mountain, Kiyomizu hangs off the hillside on wooden stilts and Nijo Castle squeaks underfoot on purpose. Pick three, not thirteen.
Arashiyama: the grove before nine, the hills for the rest of the day.
Everything in Arashiyama →
The bamboo path is four hundred metres long and quiet for about an hour after sunrise. After that the day belongs to the macaque hill, the boats on the Hozu and the temple gardens on the west bank.
The grove, before the coaches
Four hundred metres of bamboo that photographs like nothing else and fills by nine. A guided walk gets you there first and keeps going into the gardens at Tenryu-ji while the path is still cool.
Iwatayama, and the macaques at the top
A steep twenty minutes above the river ends on a bald hilltop with wild macaques wandering loose and the whole basin laid out behind them. Feeding happens from inside the hut, which is the right way round.
The Sagano railway down the gorge
An old sightseeing line runs along the Hozu gorge between Saga and Kameoka in carriages with the windows out. Pair it with the river boat and you come back to Arashiyama on the water.
The Kyoto days out more travellers take than any other.
Every Kyoto tour we have reviewed →The tours that fill first in this city, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
PERFECT KYOTO 1-Day Bus Tour
Start near Kyoto Station at 7:50 a.m. and spend 8 to 9 hours visiting Kiyomizu-dera, Sanjusangendo, Arashiyama, Tenryu-ji, Kinkaku-ji, and Fushimi Inari. Guides such as Sakura, Mai, At-Chan, and Nagomi lead the day, with multilingual audio on the coach and an optional buffet lunch.
From · $129
Read our review →
2
Fushimi Inari, Kinkakuji, Bamboo Grove 1 Day Bus Tour
from $122
3
Tea Ceremony in a Traditional Tea House in Kiyomizu
from $49
4
Kyoto Geisha Walking Tour: Gion District & Hidden Gems
from $25
5
Tea Ceremony Ju-An at Jotokuji Temple
from $29
6
Gion Magical Night Walking Tour with Geisha Trivia
from $24
7
45-Minute Tea Ceremony Lesson Experience
from $22
8
Gion Geisha District Walking Tour – Stories of Geisha
from $20
Matcha whisked in front of you, pickles at Nishiki, sake from a Fushimi brewery.
Kyoto eats quietly and precisely. Book the tea house for the full hour it deserves, the market walk before noon, and a brewery tasting down in the south of the city where the water made the sake famous.
What a day in Kyoto actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs. A good number of the best Kyoto hours come in under the price of lunch on Pontocho.
Walks through Gion, tea ceremonies, shrine entries and the standing-snack crawls downtown.
The full days: Arashiyama and Fushimi Inari together, cooking classes, the runs out to Nara and Osaka.
Private guides, a car and driver for the day, and the once-a-trip splurges that earn it.
Three things that only happen in Kyoto.
Temples and noodles exist all over Japan. A working geisha quarter, a mountain wrapped in ten thousand gates and a tea town that grades its leaves like a vineyard do not.
The Five Flower Towns
Gion Kobu, Gion Higashi, Pontocho, Miyagawacho and Kamishichiken are the surviving hanamachi, and they are places of work rather than exhibits. A maiko trains for around five years before she becomes a geiko, which is why the hair, the collar and the length of the sleeve all tell you where in that apprenticeship she is. Evening walks are timed for the hour the ozashiki bookings start and the lanes fill with people going to work.
- 1Kyoto Geisha Walking Tour: Gion District & Hidden Gems★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 3,273 reviews
- 2Gion Magical Night Walking Tour with Geisha Trivia★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 2,393 reviews
- 3Gion Geisha District Walking Tour – Stories of Geisha★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,187 reviews
The Ten Thousand Gates
Every torii on the mountain was paid for by a business, and the donor name and the date are cut into the back of the uprights, so the whole climb reads as a ledger going up the hill. The full loop is about four kilometres and rises two hundred and thirty metres, past fox statues holding keys to the rice granary. Almost everyone turns back at the Yotsutsuji junction, which is precisely where it gets quiet.
- 1Fushimi Inari, Kinkakuji, Bamboo Grove 1 Day Bus Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 4,316 reviews
- 2Fushimi Inari Hidden Hiking Tour (Private Option Available)★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,750 reviews
- 3Kinkakuji,Arashiyama,FushimiInariShrine,NaraPark★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 1,596 reviews
Uji, and the tea road
Twenty minutes south of the city, the Uji river valley has grown the country's benchmark tea since the twelfth century. Gyokuro bushes are shaded for weeks before picking to push the sweetness up, and matcha is still ground on stone mills that turn slowly enough to keep the powder cool. The Byodo-in phoenix hall sits on the ten-yen coin and on the far bank of the same river.
- 1Green Tea Tour with Byodoin and Koshoji Temple Visits★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 72 reviews
- 2UNESCO Heritage & Tea Ceremony Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 54 reviews
- 3Matcha Grinding Experience and Walking Tour in Uji Kyoto★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 26 reviews
Four Kyoto bookings that will not wait.
Most of this city can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on single sittings, fixed timetables and calendars that take no interest in when your shinkansen gets in.
- 01Kyoto Geisha Walking Tour: Gion District & Hidden GemsEvening walks run once a night and cap at a dozen people. In cherry and maple weeks they are gone before you land.
- 02Tea Ceremony in a Traditional Tea House in KiyomizuA tea room seats one sitting at a time, six or eight guests at most. There is no standby queue at the door.
- 03Kimono Tea Ceremony at Kyoto Maikoya, NISHIKIRental shops dress you in the morning and want the kimono back before six, so the day is a fixed slot. Peak-season weekends go first.
- 04Sagano Train Ride and Kyoto Guided Day TourThe Sagano line sells reserved seats on a fixed timetable and shuts down for the winter. Turning up is not a plan.
Cherry weeks, maple weeks, and a city built for a fraction of the crowd.
Twice a year the buses stop being an option and Kiyomizu is shoulder to shoulder by nine. Both windows have the same answer: start before the temples open, then spend the middle of the day somewhere with a door on it. A workshop bench, a tea room, a dojo floor, a zen hall.
Nara in forty minutes, Osaka in fifteen, Uji whenever the tea runs out.
Kyoto sits in the middle of the old capitals and the trains are absurdly good. Deer and a bronze Buddha to the south, a loud eating city to the west, and a tea town on the Uji river that supplies a good share of the matcha you will drink here.
- 1Kinkakuji,Arashiyama,FushimiInariShrine,NaraParkfrom $66
- 2Nara, Fushimi Inari Taisha, Arashiyama Bus Tourfrom $52
- 3Arashiyama, Nara & Fushimi Inari Shrine w/Lunchfrom $61
By neighbourhood
By kind of day: on foot, in a tea room, on a bike
Higashiyama, Arashiyama, Fushimi Inari: the order most first trips land on.
The newest Kyoto tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Kyoto UNESCO World Heritage Sites 1d Tour from Osaka/Kyoto
Read our review →
Experience Authentic Japanese Home Cooking in Kyoto
Read our review →
Cycling Tour at Uji’s Matcha Green Tea Fields and Heritage
Read our review →
Authentic Tea Ceremony & Sushi in The Museum of Kyoto
Read our review →
Candlelit Zen: Evening Meditation at Kyoto’s Secret Temple
Read our review →
Craig’s Kyoto Private Luxury Alphard Tour / The Early Riser
Read our review →