Kyoto is famous for its temples (over 1000) and shrines (more than 400). Clearly, there is no way to visit all of them, but here is the good news: you can always find a temple or a shrine off the beaten path and enjoy it all by yourself.
Of course, when you come to Kyoto in November during the peak of the fall foliage season, this task becomes much harder. This was our experience, and we lived to tell you all about it.
About This Itinerary
We spent 4 days in Kyoto. Our itinerary included famous places and traditional tourist activities such as visiting illuminated gardens at night. At the same time, we discovered some gems less known and as a result, less busy. Every day was packed, and we even had to drop a trip to Nara off the list. We were tired by the end. Luckily, we planned a couple of days to relax at Lake Biwa after.
4 Days in Kyoto
- Day 1 – Northern Higashiyama
- Day 2 – Fushimi-Inari-Taisha, Southern Higashiyama, Nishiki Market
- Day 3 – Kurama Hiking and Onsen, Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion)
- Day 4 – Kiyomizu-dera, Monkey Park, Uji
Day 1
Northern Higashiyama
Our train from Kanazawa arrived in Kyoto in the early afternoon. After checking into our hotel, Hyatt Regency Kyoto (highly recommend!) we decided to go for a walk. Most of Kyoto’s tourist spots are in Sothern Higashiyama, and we knew that these would be super crowded. We read about some less visited places in Northern Higashiyama, so we headed there. At the hotel, we also got some restaurant recommendations in that part of the city.
Our hotel was a short 5 min walk from Shichijō Station on the Keihan subway line. We ended up using the subway a lot in Kyoto, which made the hotel location very convenient. To get to Northern Higashiyama, we had to make one transfer, but the whole journey took less than 20 min. We exited Keage Station and saw that people were walking in one direction, so we just followed. Everybody was going to Nanzen-ji Temple, which is a big tourist attraction. We would eventually end up there as well, but we had one more stop to make before.
Tenju-an temple has a great garden surrounding a small pond. It is largely ignored by the tourists – lucky for us!
Tanya spent a good amount of time making friends with the golden fish. It tried to tell her something, but Tanya doesn’t speak bass.
After we had enough of tranquility and calm radiating from the Tenju-an garden, our next stop was Nanzen-ji. This is one of the largest and most interesting temples in Kyoto. Najazen-ji has extensive grounds and several sub-temples. The main grounds were busy with people taking pictures with the beautiful trees.
We quickly escaped the crowds and followed the recommendation of our Lonely Planet guide and looked for Oku-No-In shrine, which is hidden in the woods behind the complex, short walk up the stairs. There was not a single tourist there, just a caretaker sweeping the steps who paid no attention to us.
After exiting Nanzen-Ji complex, we continued north, again following the stream of people. At times, we had to walk very, very slow constrained by the speed of the crowd. Thankfully, there were several temples on the way, and people would gravitate to them like zombies. We just kept going until we reached The Path of Philosophy.
It was a beautiful walk along the canal, which is lined up with flowering trees and bushes as well as residential houses. This is a pedestrian street where you can easily imagine the monks strolling in pairs, contemplating the nature of the world (we didn’t see any).
We finished the walk with a visit to another off-the-beaten-path temple, Honen-In. It seats back in the woods and feels secluded, despite being just a few steps away from the major tourist spots.
The temple has a distinctive entrance with the moss-covered pagoda, and even with very few people visiting, we still had to wait a while to take the picture below.
We were hungry by then, and after some walking around in circles, we found Omen restaurant recommended by the hotel concierge. This restaurant is famous for its udon noodles, and we were lucky to find no line there (we were early for dinner).
The food was simple and delicious, especially the noodles. This was also one of the best examples we had seen on the meticulous presentation.
Of course, it is always heartwarming to have the instructions with your meal – you don’t want to mess up your omen!
After dinner, we walked all the way back to our hotel. It got dark quickly, and The Path of Philosophy looked mysterious in the flickering light of street lamps. The crowds disappeared, and only an occasional bicyclist would zip past us with silent determination.
We were following Google Map directions, and the app took us down Jingumichi Avenue, which is home to several Buddhist temples. We noticed long lines of people waiting for the temple gardens to open for the night viewing at 6 pm. One of the lines looked reasonable, and it was only 5 minutes until the opening. If you visit one garden at night, you’ve seen them all, so we took a chance on Shōren-in Monzeki.
The gardens with the small pond and the bamboo forest were very impressive in night illumination. We later learned that we stumbled upon one of the best nighttime temple in Kyoto, famous for its 1,000 blue lights.
Day 2
Fushimi-Inari-Taisha
On day 2, we went to see one of the most iconic and popular sites in Kyoto – Fushimi Inari-Taisha Shrine. This shrine, built in the 8th century, was dedicated to the god of rice and sake. It became very popular after being featured in the “Memoirs of a Geisha”.
Getting up at 6 am was worth to see the myriad of unique orange torii gates that wind through the hills of the Inari mountain. After a 30-minute walk from our hotel, we were standing at the gates of the shrine at 7 am and could not contain our excitement – we could take photos of this Instagram staple without the tourist groups in the background. The street vendors were just setting up their tents for the day, getting ready to sell their goodies to the souvenir-hungry tourists.
It was an easy hike, passing through many smaller shrines and few main ones, all protected by the stone foxes with red scarfs (the messengers of God). This magical eternal path of the torii gates leads up the mountain to a very pretty view of Kyoto.
The total hike takes about 2 hours, but we decided not to go all the way up as we did not feel like hiking before breakfast.
By 9 am, as the site was getting busier with tourists and monks hurrying to serve the gods, we were headed to our next destination of the day – South Higashiyama.
Southern Higashiyama
Southern Higashiyama is the area in Kyoto with the largest concentration of the top attractions. Hence, it is the busiest part of the city. It was still relatively early after our morning trip to Fushimi-Inari-Taisha, so we hoped for the best.
We started with Kiyomizu-dera temple, which was the closest to our Hyatt Regency. This temple opens at 6am, and the helpful concierge at the hotel recommended that we visit it just after to enjoy its undisturbed beauty. We did that on our last day (see later in the post).
Coming down from the temple, we encountered the first tour groups making their accent. You can set your watch by them – it was 9 am exactly.
Luckily, our path quickly diverged from the main tourist route. We walked down the scenic Sannen-zaka and Ninnen-zaka lanes, two charming streets lined with old wooden houses, traditional shops and restaurants.
Our walk took us to Nene-no-Michi Lane, which is another scenic street with a very relaxed and peaceful atmosphere. The street is so pretty, that we saw people dressed in kimonos all around us taking pictures and even having formal photoshoots like this newlywed couple below.
We then continued to Ishibe Alley, which also very quiet steer full of ryotei (restaurants) and ryokan (Japanese-style inns).
The alley led us to Maruyama Park, a very pretty and low key public park, a great place to relax, have a picnic or just have a quick break while visiting surrounding sights. Of course, Tanya couldn’t resist snapping a picture of this colorful couple posing on a small bridge. I really like this photo, there is something very warm and loving about it.
Our next stop was the Chion-in temple, the headquarters of the Jodo Buddhist sect, the most popular in Japan. The temple grounds were covered with yellow leaves, and people were going crazy playing in them while documenting their games for future bragging on Instagram,
Shoren-in Temple, our finals stop on this walk, impressed us with the size of its enterance gate and with the steep stairs, which I attempted to run in the hope to make up for lack of exercise during the whole week. Shoren-in was formerly the temple of an imperial abbot. It was used as a temporary imperial palace following the Great Kyoto Fire of 1788, and you can totally see how an imperator wouldn’t be ashamed to call it home.
After much walking (including our early morning trip to Fushimi-Inari-Taisha) we were hungry. We didn’t mind walking for a bit longer to reach Nishiki Market.
The market is a narrow, five-block long shopping street lined by more than one hundred shops and restaurants. You can buy all things food-related there, like fresh seafood, produce, knives and cookware. It is also a great place to see some strange foods (at least for us, outsiders) or simply taste pickles, dried seafood, and sushi.
I tried “extra large crab legs”, lightly grilled with butter and eel skewers.
We bought sushi to go and had a picnic on the river bank, giving rest to our tired legs. Then we walked all the way back to our hotel, another good 40 minutes of exercise.
In the evening, we had dinner at a very good ramen place called Kyoto Gion Ramen Muraji. It is a little hard to find, next to another very popular restaurant with big lines. Don’t be discouraged when you see people waiting outside, just go around the corner and up to the second floor for a variety of ramen and a cozy, family atmosphere.
Day 3
Kurama Hike and Onsen
After spending 2 days in Kyoto, we wanted to venture outside of the city and get away from the foliage-crazy tourists. The nice and knowledgable concierge at the Hyatt Regency recommended Kurama. Kurama is a rural town located to the north of Kyoto and is easily reachable via train. We still did not have a chance to visit the onsen (hot spring) in Japan. This small town, famous for its indoor and outdoor baths surrounded by beautiful mountains, was a perfect day trip choice.
We took the subway from Kyoto Station to Demachi Yanagi station with our JR pass and then Eizan train to Kurama (400 yen/person one way). The train was pretty crowded and we were glad to have our handy dandy face masks on. The best view, as we later realized, was at the back of the last car of this panoramic train. We couldn’t understand why everyone was getting their cameras ready until we approached the mountains. The view was pretty impressive, judge for yourself 🙂
Most people take the train all the way to Kurama and then walk up the mountain to see the Kurama dera temple, which is the main attraction there (other than the onsen). There is about an hour hike, which connects Kurama and Kibune passing the temple and over 30 other smaller temples on its way.
We did this hike in reverse by getting off one stop before Kurama at Kibuneguchi Station. The bus picked us up at the station and took us about 2 miles up the road to Kibune. I guess you can call Kibune a small village, but it is really just one street with some restaurants, which were all closed. The scene made us very happy since we felt away from civilization for the first time since arriving in Japan.
The rain started shortly after we got on the trail. We had our rain gear with us – we were taught the hard lessons earlier on our trip. We climbed for about 40 minutes, passing multiple small temples and tree formations.
When we reached the highest point of the train, we saw the Kinone Sando (Tree Root Pilgrim Path), which is exactly what you think it is… the path marked by intertwining roots.
About 10 minutes later we came to the main temple complex, where we first saw some people. There was a tour group there, so we knew that we were still in Japan.
If it wasn’t raining, these benches would be a great place to take a rest and to contemplate the beauty of pure nature. But, the benches were wet, so we just kept walking.
On the way down to Kurama, we met more and more people coming up. We were glad to be moving in the opposite direction. At the same time, we were a bit tired, otherwise, we would have spent more time hanging out by the red bridges and canteens.
When we got to the train station, we turned left and walked for about 15 minutes to reach Kurama Onsen. We were worried about it being crowded, but luckily it was almost empty. Sitting in the hot bath outside, looking at the mountains and listening to the raindrops was probably one of the most relaxing experience I’ve had in my life. Most of the patrons were local, and it helped to copy what they did to avoid embarrassing myself (of course, as always there were plenty of written instructions everywhere).
Men’s and women’s baths are separate (you get naked, so this is not any kind of segregation, just some common sense). Tanya and I agreed to meet back at the entrance in an hour. When I came out, she was already waiting for me. Unfortunately, her stay was spoiled at the end by some ignorant tourists who completely ignored the rules and jumped into the bath without washing first. Ugh. Still, she had fun.
The use of cellphones is prohibited at the onsen, hence no pictures…
We took a free shuttle back to the station, where we encountered the legendary red nose Tengu statues. We didn’t spend much time looking at them because our train was leaving for Kyoto.
Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion)
After the eventful trip to Kurama, we still had some energy (correction, I had energy and I convinced Tanya that she did, too). We had just enough time to hop on the bus and see Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion) before it closed.
This one is a must-see, even with the hordes of tourists flooding the temple complex every single day. We learned later that the current building was erected in 1955 after the original was burned down by a crazy monk. Who cares, when you look at the temple coated in gold!
The ground just outside the gates was covered with the fallen red leaves. The foliage season had reached its peak.
Day 4
Kiyomizu-dera
On the last full day in Kyoto, we finally fulfilled our commitment to visit Kiyomizu-dera early in the morning to beat the crowds. The temple was a short walk from our hotel, and we reached it a few minutes after 6 am.
We used Gojōzaka entrance and took a path leading up the hill past a few smaller temples and a cemetery. The rain started to fall lightly, and of course, we were prepared. By the time we made it up to the main complex, the rain stopped and the sky cleared. We looked up, and there it was – the beautiful rainbow.
Sacrificing a few hours of sleep had paid off. We were able to browse the premises and enjoy the breathtaking views of Kyoto almost in complete solitude.
The temple was built in the 8th century and later reconstructed in 1633. The red pagoda is the most prominent and famous part of the temple complex. It is truly impressive, towering above everything around it and thrusting its spear into the sky.
The expansive ground is no less interesting and photogenic, especially when the leaves are so bright red that their color almost hurts your eyes.
Monkey Park
Our next destination was the subject of many debates between Tanya and me. For some reason, Arashiyama Monkey Park was not featured in any “must-see” lists of Kyoto attractions. There were also some negative reviews on TripAdvisor about the hike up to the park, which was apparently pretty steep. But Tanya wanted to see the monkeys more than all the remaining Kyoto shrines and temples put together, so we went to see the monkeys. And it was the best experience of our trip.
The part is located in Arashiyama, where most people go to see the bamboo grove. We read so much about crowds there, so the bamboos were not on our list. We did have to walk very slow from the train station because of so many tourists and locals enjoying the river views and heading for the mandatory bamboo walk.
Every review of the Monkey Park starts the same way: “After a challenging 20 min walk up…”. Please. It is not challenging unless you come with a big tour group then no, don’t go there, you will not make it! Let’s keep the monkeys free from the scary selfy sticks.
Speaking of scary, the walk up is also an opportunity to learn about the rules of interaction with monkeys. You learn that they are wild animals and should be handled with care.
When we got to the top, I actually followed these rules for the first 2 minutes and forced Tanya to stay away, not look into their eyes, etc. We soon realized that nobody cared about the rules, including the monkeys. They were everywhere. They walked, ran, jumped, screamed and did all the wild monkey things while the humans stood with their mouths open and took a million pictures. It was a wonderful sight!
One baby-monkey even ran between Tanya’s feet, and she didn’t notice until I showed her the photo.
The culmination of our experience was feeding the monkeys while you and in the cage and they are outside – very good idea!
There is a lot of competition for the small treats, so Tanya had to be really creative to make sure that this little guy got his share. The adult monkeys were behaving like big bullies. One of them even peed on his friends (and family) to show his anger (his stream caught a couple of tourists, too).
We spent a couple of hours in the park and didn’t want to leave. The sun was out, and the view of Kyoto was very nice as well.
After coming down, we had some street food for lunch and went to the hotel to rest. We had one more place to visit in Kyoto before putting the bow on our stay.
Uji
Uji is a small city situated between Kyoto and Nara. We decided to skip Nara because (yes, I sound like a broken record) of the crowds. Uji, however, is not too busy with tourists, despite its famous green tea and the stunning Byodoin Temple.
The JR train to Uji took less than 30 minutes. We instantly liked how quiet it was. We arrived in the late afternoon, and the town was sleepy, despite some random tourists roaming the streets.
We made out way to Byodoin Temple, passing small stores selling matcha tea and countless restaurants serving anything and everything (even ramen) made with matcha as an ingredient.
Byodoin Temple is a UNESCO World Heritage site tha was built over 1000 years ago. It seats on the side of a pond, and its delicate features are reflected in the water making the seen pure magic.
We even went inside and walked the rooms on the temple museum to learn about its history (descriptions in English, hurray!).
The sun was starting to set, and we took a short walk along the Uji river before heading back to Kyoto for some sushi.
We finished our last day in Kyoto with a visit to Sushi no Musashi conveyor belt sushi restaurant, which was our first-time experience in this type of establishment. We liked the variety of sushi and a simple, yet effective selection process.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped to listen to amateur piano performances at the station. Tanya tempted me to play as well (that’s not me below, as you could have guessed).
It was a lot of fun to play for a small crowd of people, who I would never see again in my life. What a great conclusion to our time in Kyoto!