Kyoto Guide

When planning our trip to Japan, I spent so much time on Tokyo, I barely planned anything for Kyoto. In my mind I thought Kyoto was much smaller and wouldn’t require as much time and planning (I know completely out of my character). Although, compared to Tokyo, Kyoto is smaller, it is still a big city. Kyoto is the city if you want to see tons of shrines, temples, and history. Like Tokyo, entrance to the shrines and temples is free, but any trinkets/food you want to buy are cash only. Kyoto is divided into the older part, Gion, a more modern area, and areas where the shrines and temples are located. Shrines and temples are very spread out (Kyoto in general felt spread out) and public transportation is mostly by bus, but buses are not always easy to spot. It can take 50 min one way to get to one shrine/temple, so plan accordingly. Don’t be like me!

My husband and I took a bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto that took about 2 hr and 20 min. Bullet trains are pretty pricy, but if you think about the distance that is covered in that timespan, the price makes sense (roundtrip per person is about $220 from Tokyo). We took a 9 am train to Kyoto from the main Tokyo train station and stayed one night, taking the 5:30 pm train back to Tokyo. In hindsight, I wish I had planned Kyoto out more so that we could see more shrines/temples and more of the city, but we did still get to see a good amount. It just felt rushed, which I don’t like when traveling. I would say give yourself 2-3 days in Kyoto depending on how much you want to see. I found a lot of good itineraries on Pinterest that I tailored to our schedule.

Day One in Kyoto: Take train from Tokyo, find hotel and head to Fushimi Inari Shrine, Kiyomizu-dera Temple and Higashiyama-Ku district, walk through Gion and check out the hotel Onsen.

 

Riding the bullet train was definitely a really cool experience. As fast as the trains go, you really do not feel it. The trains are very clean and quiet. Prior to getting on the train we picked up breakfast, coffee and egg sandwich for me, and a bento box for my husband. If you do get thirsty or hungry on the train, and attendant does come around a couple of times with drinks (hot and cold) and snacks for purchase. One of the coolest things we saw on our train ride to Kyoto was Mt. Fuji. I was not expecting to see it and it really was breathtaking to see, even from the train. Once we arrived at the Kyoto train station, heading out we noticed a lot of cute shops and restaurants and I made note to give ourselves an hour before leaving for Tokyo to look around. To save time, we decided to take a taxi from the train station to our hotel, Keio Prelia Hotel Kyoto Karasuma Gojo. It is a new hotel and our taxi driver got lost looking for it so we ended up wasting a little bit of time. I am not going to spend time doing a whole review of our hotel since we only stayed for one night. The hotel cost us about $120 for the night with breakfast. Although the rooms were clean, they were super tiny at about 200 square feet. The key highlights of the hotel are the pajamas and tote bag they provide and the onsite Onsen (more on that later). I can’t comment on the breakfast cause we overslept the next day from exhaustion and completely missed it. We booked it through Agoda and the website says its in the center of Kyoto, but I found it to be too far from the places we wanted to go to. I would pick another hotel next time.

Our room was not ready when we checked in, so we decided to go check out a shrine. After doing a quick google map search I realized that the buses/trains would take a while (50 min to an hour one way) and decided to just take a taxi to the Fushimi Inari Shrine. Taxis are expensive for any distance longer than say 10min. It cost us about $30 for the one way to the temple but it shaved off 30 min and it was the one time I was ok spending the money. If we had more time in Kyoto, I would have just taken the bus or train.

 

Upon arriving at the main entrance to the shrine, we realized we were pretty hungry. Thankfully there was a convenience store across the street and we picked up some sushi and salads and were able to eat quickly, enjoying the view of the main entrance. Fushimi Inari has to be one of my favorite shrines and is what I think of when I picture typically Japanese shrines. Throughout the grounds of the shrine there are these cute little statues of foxes, which are thought to be messengers of the god of this shrine.

 

I could not get enough of these beautiful Tori gates. If you follow the trail of the gates through the forest, you will end up at Mount Inari. However, the hike to the top and back is about 2-3 hours and since we had limited time in Kyoto we skipped it.

 

After walking the grounds of the temple we walked the surrounding streets and checked out some of the cute little shops selling traditional chopsticks and furoshiki which is a square piece of beautiful cloth used to wrap items in. We also stopped into a sake shop where my hubby got to do a tasting of sake for free and picked up a really nice bottle to take home. From there we had a less than 5 min walk to the Fushimi-Inari train station and took the train to Kiyomizu-Gojo train station and walked about 10 min to the Higashiyama District and another 10 min to the Kiyomizu-Dera Temple. The walk to the temple is up a little hill past cute little shops. The temple itself is worth a visit being a World Heritage Site and offers great views of the Higashiyama district, locals dressed traditionally, and surrounding greenery.

The grounds themselves have a lot of really unique statues and shrines. We spent a solid hour or even longer walking the grounds and taking everything in.

After exploring the shrine, we took in the views of the Higashiyama District. The district is one of Kyoto’s best preserved historical districts. The lanes are very narrow and packed with traditional wooden buildings and merchant shops. When we were there the lanes were also packed with tourists.  This is a great spot to pick up traditional green tea deserts, ceramics, jewelry, great green tea and all sorts of other souvenirs. I picked up a beautiful silk scar for my Mom here and my hubby bought himself a small Samurai sword.

 

There are also lots of little restaurants and cafes at one of which we stopped in to get some green tea soft serve. We even stopped into a Snoopy Cafe where we picked up some hot chocolate. I do wish we had more time to wander the shops.

After wandering the district we decided to head to the hotel to relax a bit and to head to Gion for dinner. We ended up having to take a taxi to our hotel as we could not find the bus stop based on our google maps directions!

For dinner we found this cute little okonomiyaki restaurant (Gion Tanto) right in the heart of Gion, next to a picturesque little stream. When you walk into the restaurant, you do have to take your shoes off and you sit on the floor when eating (they give you a locker for the shoes). While eating, we even spotted a Geisha, which is a rarity. So what is okonomiyaki? It is a savory Japanese pancake with ingredients of your choice and very popular in Kyoto. I was very hungry when I took the picture below and couldn’t stop myself from taking a bite first!

After dinner we walked around the charming streets of Gion and decided we needed to come back the next day.

Once we got back to the hotel, I went to check out the hotel Onsen. What is an Onsen? It is a Japanese hot spring in which you bath naked, men and women separate. Pretty cool that our hotel had one, but it really wasn’t my thing. I kind of felt awkward bathing naked with random Japanese women.

Day Two in Kyoto: 7-11 breakfast, Kinkakujicho Temple (Golden Temple), walk through downtown Kyoto, train back to Tokyo.

On day two in Kyoto, we had planned on getting up around 8am and getting breakfast in the hotel before heading out to see more temples. Well, as I mentioned before, we overslept and completely missed breakfast. To our defense, although our room was tiny, it was very cozy and pitch black. That combined with our exhaustion from day before and it being a rainy day, there was no way we were going to get up early. By the time we left the hotel it was close to 11 am. We made sure to check out and left our luggage at the front desk so we could just easily grab it before heading to the train station. Knowing we didn’t have a whole day, we walked over to the nearest 7-11 and picked up some miso soup, smoothies and my favorite egg sandwiches. I have to say it was a rather tasty breakfast. From there we hopped on the bus and headed straight for the Kinkakujicho Temple. The bus stop was about a 5 min walk from our hotel and it took us about 50 min to get to the temple. One thing I did forget to mention, we were able to use the Suica card we purchased in Tokyo to use buses in Kyoto.

The Kinkakujicho Temple, also know as the Golden Temple, is a must see. It is absolutely stunning and the grounds are beautiful. Even though it was raining it was pretty crowded.

The grounds include a teahouse, stalls with locals sweets and savory snacks, and a gift shop with local art/crafts. We spent a solid hour walking around and picked up some Omamori (good luck charms) and a small painting.

After walking around we were debating going to the Arashiyama Forest known for its bamboo trees and monkeys, but decided against it since it was raining and would take us about 2 hours traveling back and forth. We didn’t want to miss our train back to Tokyo! Instead we decided to walk around the area of the Golden Temple where we stopped into a really cute coffee shop for coffee and I stumbled on the Yojiya store which is a well known Kyoto skincare brand, known for its oil blotting sheets. I had to pick those up for the humid summers in Chicago! Picture from store below. I also found this super cute Maiko doll we bought as a gift for our niece.

Afterwords, we hopped on the bus to head to downtown Kyoto for lunch, and a final walk through the downtown area and Gion. For lunch we had the most amazing Udon soup. Nothing beats soup on a rainy day, especially when it is less than $5 for a basic udon. The tempura was roughly $1 a piece. The name of the restaurant was Marugame Seimen Kawaramachi Sanjo.

While walking after lunch we stumbled upon some cute side streets with an indoor mall and a really cool temple with this large gold Buddha Statue.

So you know how I mentioned we were worried we would miss our train to Tokyo? Well we almost did! We had a really hard time finding a taxi to take us back to the hotel. After waiting for about 20 min or so, we finally flagged one down. Thankfully it was only a 10 min ride to the hotel where we quickly ran in to grab our luggage (good thing we checked out earlier!). This time around I realized that the Kyoto train station is one train stop from the train that was a 5 min walk from our hotel (thank you google maps!). Long story short we managed to get to the train station from our hotel in about 15 min and I still had time to check out the shops in the station. I even bought some green tea made in Kyoto to take home. We enjoyed a peaceful and quick bullet train ride back to Tokyo and were in the main train station a little before 8pm. Till next time Kyoto!