Travel
Kyoto as the locals live it: a guide to the city’s own places, away from the flows
A map of places that stay beautiful even when nobody photographs them, organised by neighbourhood. Check opening days before you go: Kyoto’s small places often close on varying weekdays.
Kyoto is two cities laid on top of each other. The first is the postcard one: Fushimi Inari at dawn, the bamboo of Arashiyama, Kiyomizu-dera with a queue running down to Gojo. The second is the one where Kyoto people go to work, do their shopping, drink a coffee without hurrying. This guide is about the second. It is not an itinerary and it does not claim to be complete: it is a map of places that stay beautiful even when nobody photographs them, organised by neighbourhood, with one simple principle. In Kyoto the best things are found by walking along a river, stepping into a covered shopping arcade or climbing a hill the tour buses skip.
Demachiyanagi and the Kamo delta
The point where the Kamo and Takano rivers meet is the city’s open-air living room. You sit on the grass, cross on the turtle-shaped stepping stones, watch the students from the nearby university. A few steps away is Masugata Shopping Street, a covered arcade of neighbourhood shops selling fresh fish, vegetables and tôfu. At its mouth, Demachi Futaba has been selling mame-mochi since 1899 — mochi filled with anko, red beans pressed into the surface: the queue is made of residents, and it moves fast.
Ichijōji: books, ramen and hillside temples
One stop on the Eizan line north of Demachiyanagi. Keibunsha Ichijōji is an independent bookshop the Guardian once listed among the most beautiful in the world: art books, magazines, a gallery in the back, everything chosen by hand. The same street is the city’s “ramen road”: dozens of signs, almost all frequented by students. Climbing east you reach Shisen-dō, the hermitage of a seventeenth-century samurai-poet, with a garden of clipped azaleas and a silence that feels tuned. A little further up, Enkō-ji, a temple school with a maple garden that turns incandescent in November, and still visited far too little.
Nishijin: the weavers’ quarter
To the west, among lanes where you can still hear looms beating, are some of the places residents love most.
- Funaoka Onsen — a 1920s public bath with carved ceilings, majolica tiles and an open-air tub. You enter for a few yen and leave with a different idea of luxury.
- Sarasa Nishijin — a café built into another historic sento, original tiles left in view. Homemade cakes, curry, big tables.
- Daitoku-ji, sub-temple Kōtō-in — in the great zen complex, the sub-temples open in rotation are the crowd-free version of the moss gardens. Kōtō-in, when open, has an entrance path worth the visit on its own.
- Ichiwa and Kazariya — facing the Imamiya shrine, two shops opposite each other have sold aburi-mochi for centuries: morsels of mochi on bamboo skewers, charred over embers and covered in white miso sauce. Ichiwa claims origins in the year 1000.
Higashiyama, the quiet part
The Philosopher’s Path is crowded only in its central stretch. At its two ends are two temples that Kyoto people keep for themselves. Hōnen-in, with its thatched gate and the two raked sand dunes whose pattern changes with the seasons, charges nothing for the garden. Shinnyō-dō, on the hill, has a three-storey pagoda and an avenue of maples where in autumn you stroll without a ticket.
The monthly markets: the calendar that matters
Kyoto has no permanent flea market; it has three that return every month, and residents mark them in their diaries.
- The 15th — Tezukuri-ichi at Chion-ji, near Demachiyanagi: handmade craft, ceramics, textiles, food. The youngest and most curated of the three.
- The 21st — Kōbō-san at Tō-ji: antiques, second-hand kimono, tools, plants. Enormous, from dawn.
- The 25th — Tenjin-san at Kitano Tenmangū: similar to Kōbō-san but more gathered, with street-food stalls under the plum trees.
Coffee and tea, without the stage set
- Weekenders Coffee Tominokoji — a micro-roastery hidden at the back of a car park in the centre, with a tiny counter and a small garden. It is the coffee Kyoto baristas point to when you ask where they go.
- Kaikado Café — the Kaikado family has made hand-beaten copper and tin tea caddies since 1875. The café sits in a former tram depot, and everything you touch is made by the city’s artisans.
- Wife and Husband — a couple, one room, slow coffee near the Kamo; you can rent a picnic basket and take it to the riverbank.
- Ippodō Tea — the tea house founded in 1717: at the main Teramachi shop you can learn to brew a sencha or a gyokuro at the counter.
Eating the way people eat here
- Honke Owariya — soba since 1465, born as a confectioner for the court. The main house is a wooden building in Nijo; the right order is the layered hōrai soba.
- Omen — udon served with a tray of seasonal vegetables to add to the broth; the historic branch is near Ginkaku-ji.
- Gyoza Hohei — in Gion, one counter and a single dish done superbly.
- Torisei, in Fushimi — an izakaya in an old sake brewery, where you drink sake freshly drawn beside the barrels, in the distillery district south of the city.
The evening
Kyoto closes early, but not entirely. Bar K6, near Kiyamachi, is a whisky bar with a single-malt selection that would hold its own in Tokyo. Jazz Spot Yamatoya, in Higashiyama, is a jazz kissaten with a hi-fi system kept like an altar and a record collection accumulated over half a century.
Out of town, half an hour by train
Kurama and Kibune, on the Eizan line: a mountain path between the two villages, a temple on the ridge and, in summer, the platforms over the Kibune stream where you eat suspended above the water. Ōhara, with Sanzen-in and its stone Jizō in the moss, and the rice-field countryside all around. These are the two places a Kyoto local recommends to show you where the calm of the city comes from.
Three rules for using this guide well
- Move by bicycle: the city is flat and the places on this list are within pedalling distance.
- Go early or late: at 8 in the morning even the famous places are local.
- Plan at most three stops a day. Kyoto rewards those who linger.
Photo credits: all images under the Unsplash License. Authors: Su San Lee (cover), Clay Banks, Roméo A., Nic Y-C, David Emrich (two photos), Masaaki Komori. For up-to-date addresses and hours, a quick Google Maps search before heading out is your friend.
