Forty-Eight Hours in Kyoto Without a Map
Two days of getting deliberately lost — temple bells, a tea master who refused to hurry, and the quiet north of the city.
The trick to Kyoto, a friend told me before I left, is to put the phone away and let the city set the pace.
By the second morning I’d missed the bus I planned around and walked the long way through Higashiyama instead. The tour groups hadn’t arrived; the lanes were swept and empty.
I planned almost nothing in advance, leaning on a good city guide and otherwise trusting the streets to do the rest.
Where the city slows down
North of the centre the temples thin out and the tea houses begin. I stopped at one with no English sign and was served by a man who treated pouring as though it were the entire point of the afternoon.
A few things I learned, in no particular order:
- Fushimi Inari before 7am, while the gates are still yours alone.
- Nishiki market slowly, with an empty stomach.
- The northern temples on foot, with no fixed plan.
You are not in a hurry here. Nothing here is in a hurry.
I left on the third morning genuinely sad, which is the only review of a place that has ever meant anything to me.