Northern Higashiyama:
the best walking
day in Kyoto

This is the second-trip district, and the district people who live in Kyoto actually recommend. It is quieter, greener and more cultured than Gion, and about a third cheaper.

Stay here if you have been to Kyoto before, if you like art — the Kyocera Museum of Art and MoMAK are both in Okazaki — if you walk a lot, or if you are coming for cherry blossom or autumn colour. In early April the weeping cherries around Heian Shrine's garden are the best in the city, and from about 20 November to 5 December Eikan-do is the single best maple temple in Kyoto.

Avoid it if you want restaurants and bars on your doorstep. Evenings here are quiet to the point of empty, and the Ginkaku-ji end of the district has no train at all — it is buses or a 25-minute walk to the nearest subway. Hotel stock is thin: expect to choose between three or four properties rather than three hundred.

The geography: the Tozai subway runs along the southern edge with stations at Higashiyama and Keage. Keage is the good one, because you arrive at Nanzen-ji through the nejirimanpo — a short tunnel built of spiral-laid brick under the old canal incline, which is a small piece of theatre for free. From Keage everything below is on foot.

How it compares on price and transit is on the where to stay hub; the neighbouring district is Gion, 20 minutes south on foot.

Start at Keage station at 08:30 and you will finish at Ginkaku-ji around 15:00 having spent roughly ¥2,300, walked four kilometres and queued for nothing.

Nanzen-ji — grounds free. Head temple of its Rinzai school, with a colossal wooden Sanmon gate you can climb for ¥600 and, behind it, the Suirokaku: a Meiji-era red-brick Roman-style aqueduct running straight through a zen temple complex, which is as strange as it sounds and completely free to walk under. The subtemple gardens run ¥400–600 each and Nanzen-in is the pick.

Eikan-do Zenrin-ji — ¥600, rising to about ¥1,000 in the autumn illumination season. Around 3,000 maples on a hillside, a pagoda you climb to for the view, and the Amida statue that looks back over its shoulder. In late November this is the most beautiful ticket in Kyoto and also a queue; in June it is empty and lush.

The Philosopher's Path — free, two kilometres of canal-side walking. Be honest with yourself about this one: in sakura season it is genuinely lovely and lined end to end with cherry trees, and for the other ten months it is a pleasant ordinary canal path with cafés on it. It is a way to get from Eikan-do to Ginkaku-ji, not a destination.

Honen-in — free, and the best-kept secret on the path. A thatched gate, two raked sand mounds, moss, and usually nobody. Shoren-in — ¥600, at the southern end near Chion-in, with four vast 800-year-old camphor trees outside the wall and an unusually calm garden inside. Ginkaku-ji — ¥500, the Silver Pavilion that was never silvered, with a sand cone and the best moss garden in the district; verdict on its own page and the head-to-head at Kinkaku-ji vs Ginkaku-ji.

Okazaki and Heian Shrine — the shrine grounds and its 24-metre vermillion torii, the largest in Japan, are free; the Shin-en garden behind is ¥600 and worth it in the first week of April for the weeping cherries. The Kyocera Museum of Art and the National Museum of Modern Art face each other across the same park, both around ¥700–1,800 depending on the exhibition.

Thin, and that is the district's real weakness. Lunch is easy, dinner takes planning, and after 21:00 there is nothing.

Lunch: the yudofu restaurants outside Nanzen-ji are the local institution — simmered tofu sets for roughly ¥3,000–5,000, served in gardens, and better than that description suggests on a cold day. Cheaper: the cafés along the Philosopher's Path do sandwiches, curry and coffee for ¥900–1,500, and the Okazaki museums have decent café-restaurants.

Dinner: the good places are small, owner-run and need reserving. The most-wanted table in the district is a modern kaiseki counter on the Philosopher's Path that opens bookings exactly two months ahead at 12:00 JST and sells out within seconds — set an alarm and pre-fill the form, or accept you will not get it.

The realistic plan is to walk the district by day and eat downtown. Tozai subway from Higashiyama or Keage to Karasuma-Oike takes 6–8 minutes and puts you in the middle of a thousand restaurants. Twenty minutes on foot south gets you to Gion for kaiseki.

One reliable local pleasure: matcha and a sweet at a temple tea room mid-walk, usually ¥800–1,200 including admission at places like Shoren-in. See the matcha page for what you are drinking.