Japan's Kansai region contains six of the country's top seven prefectures in terms of national treasures. Any fan of history, art and architecture is likely to be happier if they spend the bulk of their trip in this region forming a belt across Japan's main island of Honshu, about 2/3ds of the way down its length. Osaka, Nara and Kyoto form a tight little triangle in the broad plains and valleys here, with less than an hour between each by train. You could easily tour all the major sites from any one, and most people choose either Osaka or Kyoto as a base. We split our time between Osaka (four nights) and Kyoto (six nights), and were glad we had time to get to know both.
If I had to choose one, however, Kyoto's sheer density of historic sites would tip the scale. (And just about anything in Kansai would beat Tokyo, in my book, but the rugby logistics of our trip mandated 11 nights in the capital.)
My experience simply validated what anyone who knew both me and Japan predicted, though Kyoto's ample charms are not obvious at first glance. Given what I knew ... it was the ancient imperial capital, home to the emperor and his surrounding ceremony but abandoned by functioning government from about 1600 AD ... I was expecting a place like Venice or Bruges; a backwater, now consigned to history and tourism, preserved in aspic at the point of it fell out of the centre of action. How wrong I was!
I've now learned that Japan's propensity for earthquake and fires ... the latter a constant threat in a country where, until modern times, all buildings were made of wood and paper ... makes any building to have survived from earlier times a miracle. Like the rest of Japan, the bulk of Kyoto's buildings have moved on. More importantly, Kyoto is dynamic, vibrant and lives very much in the present, complete with businesses, a thriving university and plenty of government offices. The impressive history is here, sometimes cheek-by-jowl with modernity and sometimes hidden in back lanes behind the glass, steel and concrete office blocks and stores lining most of the main avenues. The grid pattern of wide, straight streets may date back to 1000-year-old ceremonial and processional needs, but today it gives much of Kyoto the feel of a bustling, mid-sized American city.
Embracing the sometimes-jarring contradictions between ancient and modern is key to appreciating Japan; a realisation we first made in Kyoto. We based ourselves near, and ate most of our meals in, the enormous train station. Opened in 1992, drawing inspiration from futurism and cubism, it's one of the country's largest buildings. It houses six railway lines, the city's subway system, the main bus station, an enormous branch of Isetan department store with two interior "streets" of individual restaurants on its top floors, a shopping mall, a luxury hotel, a movie theatre, several local government departments and a roof garden. Parts of the complex, most notably the long line of escalators that proceed in a straight diagonal up seven stories to the garden, with a monumental staircase on the top few floors and a plaza at the mid point with "gateways" looking over the city in either direction, are as arresting a sight as any of Kyoto's famous temples.
The roof garden makes an excellent starting point for an exploration of the city, as it offers views over the whole city and is free. In London, it would have a ridiculously expensive cocktail bar and crowds of young professionals. Here, it's just a quiet place for contemplation on an industrial roof. As a whole, especially from the outside, the station is horrifically ugly, and the surrounding streets would stand in for the dystopian future film set of your choice. But it's magnificently convenient, both for getting to and from everything you want to see and for sourcing food and drink at the end of exhausting days of sightseeing. Even if you somehow managed to avoid travelling through it, I'd still put it on the "must see" list and plan on a couple of hours to wander around.
NIJO
Our primary sightseeing objectives, of course, were firmly-rooted in the Imperial past. Kyoto is strong on temples and gardens, both of which I'll cover in other stories. Despite the glories I'll describe in those articles, if I had just one day in Kyoto I'd head for Nijo Castle. There are a lot of temples and gardens across the country, but very few palatial residences that still have much of their interior decoration.
Nijo was the Kyoto residence of the Tokugawa clan throughout the two and a half centuries they were shoguns. Though they effectively ran Japan from Edo (today's Tokyo) they needed to keep up the pretence of imperial authority, so regularly visited the emperor in Kyoto. Naturally, though they were one step down from the imperial family, they wanted the world to see that it was a very small step. When Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of his clan and the great unifier of Japan, started building the place, he demanded "contributions" from all the great families. Officially, Ieyasu was allowing them to add to the honour and glory of the newly-unified state. Cleverly, he was also reducing the resources of any families who might challenge him. The result was even grander than the imperial palace, and became the home of the restored Emperor Meiji when he and his family returned to power in the 19th century, before they moved up to Tokyo. The flurry of renovations done at that time is one of the reasons the interiors are in such good shape now. In short: the place has form. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is the rough equivalent of Windsor Castle or Versailles, though in a very Japanese way.
Nijo is an enormous moated complex in the centre of town, hidden from passing traffic by high walls and corner gatehouses. Inside there are actually two palaces, the Ninomaru and the Honmaru, the latter being a fortress within a fortress with its own moat and screening walls. The Honmaru is closed for renovation right now, with only its gardens open to the public. The Ninomaru, frankly, is so breathtaking that I can't imagine having the brain space to appreciate the smaller palace in the same viewing, even had it been open.
It's the wall paintings that will be stealing your oxygen. Japanese rooms ... even palatial ones ... have little furniture. If you want to show off, you do it with the quality of painting on the sliding screens that form your walls. Various suites of rooms offer differing visions of power and authority: pine trees, birds of prey, tigers. (The last end up oddly sweet rather than menacing, as the artists clearly had never actually seen the animals and give us over-sized, slightly lumpen house cats.) All of the backgrounds are gold leaf, weathered to a mellow glow. In more private areas, the scenes get more casual, with pictures of everyday life and a remarkable series of waterfowl on winter lakes. There's even a hallway of exotic palm trees that shows that England's Prince Regent was on the right track with his Pavilion at Brighton, even though his architects couldn't possibly have seen this room. (Japan was still closed to foreigners at the time.) Besides the tigers, the virtuosity of the artists and the realism with which they present their subjects is astonishing. In what's essentially the throne room, you really do feel that you've wandered into a pine forest in an atmosphere of liquid gold.
Ceiling panels are also lavishly painted, sometimes with naturalistic motifs, others abstract or with family crests. Carvings in the transoms between sliding screens and ceilings are opulent in three dimensional detail, usually carrying on nature themes from the rooms below. In one astonishing example, even though the carving is pierced through in many places to let light flow, the scenes on each side are completely different. If you can tear your eyes away from all that colour and detail, the bronze work providing latches, door handles and nail covers is gorgeous while the simple paper screens, the dark wooden floors and the sleek lines of the long hallways are a design triumph.
The Ninomaru Palace is at the centre of a complex of buildings, all of which have striking roof guardians along their eaves and many of which have ornate carved gables. Elaborate gateways are an important part of Japanese architecture, and the one into the Ninomaru ... called the kara-mon ... is a blockbuster. Its elegant, bow-like roofline, gilded decorations of filigree metal work, brightly-painted carvings of storks and butterflies set against plants, and showy tiles and terra-cotta sculptures along its peak would be the most ornate gate we saw until we got to Ieyasu's tomb in Nikko.
There are three gardens of note within the palace complex, the one outside the Ninomaru being the most classically beautiful with its ponds, pines and carefully-placed black boulders.
GION
Kyoto's Gion district was another unique highlight of this trip: it was the only place in all Japan that I found the combination of distinctive and charming architecture, fascinating crafts and atmospheric bars and cafes that add up to my perfect idea of a local shopping district. One of my greatest regrets of the trip is not having more time (and energy) to spend several hours wandering aimlessly here.
Most guidebooks will recommend a start at the Gion-Shijo subway station, with a quick stop to pay tribute to the riverside statue of Izumo-no-Okuni, the woman who's credited with founding the theatrical style called Kabuki. Then you'll head east up the broad avenue of Shijo-Dori, walking by the city's main Kabuki theatre before strolling beneath covered arcades of shops on either side of the street. Most of these seem to be selling luxury food: either the sweets made from various bean pastes or pickled vegetables, both of which Kyoto is famous for.
So celebrated are these pickled vegetables that there's an exclusive restaurant on this street that builds the whole menu around them. We stumbled into Nashiri by mistake: tired, hungry and mistaking the sample plates displayed out front as sushi. It was only after we'd settled in to an elegant dining room, ordered and started working our way through a visually exquisite meal that we realised all of the pieces we assumed would be fish were different vegetables. Though we both left feeling a bit unfulfilled, this has to be the most beautiful vegetarian meal ever created.
Continue up the street to Ichiriki Chaya, a striking terra-cotta coloured tea house that you're unlikely to be entering. It's been here for 300 years and is still an exclusive place where Geisha entertain the rich and prominent. Samurai film fans will thrill to the fact that it's where one of the leaders of the real 47 Ronin assumed the role of a dissolute wastrel until the time came to spring an elaborate revenge plot. The tea house marks the start of Hanamikoji Dori, one of the most famous streets in Gion. It's lined with picturesque wooden houses now used as shops, restaurants and small cultural spaces. If you want to buy in to a Geisha experience, it's probably going to be here.
I preferred the streets around the Yasaka-no-tou temple, a five-story wooden pagoda that's become the quintessential picture of Gion. Though the streets up here ... you're hiking uphill from the river ... are still packed with tourists, there are fewer big groups and more interesting shops. The most beautiful street is called Nineizaka, really just a pedestrianised lane that runs north-south, curving down and back up a little valley just above the pagoda. (The Park Hyatt Kyoto fronts onto the lane's northeastern edge, making a great landmark to find it.)
You're more likely to be peering into the studio of a working craftsperson here; pottery, paper making, and fabric painting, dying and embroidery are all common. There's even a caricature artist who will draw you manga-style. There are also plenty of kimono shops where you can buy your own, or hire one with all the proper accessories to wear for the day.
All the tourist literature encourages you to keep an eye out for a real Geisha, or more likely for their trainees ... maiko ... going about their business. Though we're fairly sure we saw two groups of maiko, differentiated from lesser humans by their matching kimono, highly-styled hair, traditional shoes and handbags, and escorting older chaperone, most of the women we spotted in kimono were probably tourists. Sightseeing in costume is increasingly popular for both women and men, and listening to their conversation tells me that the overwhelming majority of Oriental people in traditional dress in Gion are actually Chinese. That's ironic on multiple fronts, particularly in that traditional Japanese dress was basically a straight knock-off of Tang Dynasty court costume in the 9th century. Early medieval Japanese had an enormous cultural inferiority complex and copied China for everything considered worthy. China moved on in costume, artistic styles and the use of chairs. Japan didn't. I wonder how many Chinese tourists adopting kimono realise they're actually tapping in to their own medieval past?
SAMURAI JUKU
If you're more martially minded, you might prefer a samurai experience over shopping the lanes of Gion. My husband certainly did.
This took a lot of research. Like the cooking experiences mentioned in my last story, TripAdvisor lists a bewildering number of "samurai schools", both in Tokyo and Kyoto. All of them involve dressing up for Instagram-worthy shots, but there seems to be a wide variety in quality of instructor, what you actually get to do and your access to real blades. Given that the husband was vice-captain of his school fencing team, is a military veteran and well-versed in samurai film and history, this needed to be more than playing dress-up.
Samurai Juku delivered the quality we were looking for, though at a premium price point. For just under £80, you'll dress in black martial arts clothing, get a lecture from a sword expert who's descended from a samurai family, watch him do a few showy moves, learn how to unsheath and sheath a real blade, then head out to the back garden to swing your sword a few times to cut through a tatami mat. You can also just watch and photograph; for £40. It's a lot of money if you're not passionate about this stuff. If you are, it's a small price to get close to something you've only studied from afar.
The training ground shares its site with an armourer who makes full sets of highly-accurate kit for films, historical re-enactments and ceremonies. Come early to have a snoop around the gorgeous variety of armour on display. (Sadly, nobody was at work in the armoury when we were there.) This collection is as impressive as what you'll see in the National Museum in Tokyo. It just happens to be new.
Sword master Kawata-sensei is a small, venerably matured, grave-faced, bespectacled Japanese man who bears a distinct resemblance to Yoda when he's teaching 6-foot plus Europeans who tower above him. It's an even more pronounced comparison when he demonstrates some moves, springing from complete stillness into an arcing, swirling dance of menacing blades.
Kawata-sensei's accompanying "padawan" at our session was a young Japanese man who grew up outside of Detroit, and could thus translate the teacher's instruction and students' questions in detail. While I'm not sure that either my husband or I learned huge amounts about Samurai or their swords, because we started from a well-informed place, the session still had merit in being illustrated with real blades and the master's demonstrations of various moves. After about 30 minutes of discussion, it was time for the students to get on their feet with swords in their hands.
The length of a samurai sword, or katana, is between 60 and 80 cm. The average human arm length is about 76 cm. So getting one of these blades in and out of a scabbard hanging at your hip is challenging. Kawata-sensei and his assistant are patient with students of all abilities, praising those whose prior experience lets them get the hang of things more quickly while giving extra assistance to those who need it. By the time the lesson transfers to the garden and the tatami cutting, the students have the feel of things. With Kawata-sensei to direct the angle, everyone is a success (the razor-sharp blades and gravity do much of the work) and everyone gets a photo opportunity. They may be teaching an ancient art, but they're also plugged in to the digital age. The assistant not only translates and coaches on sword technique; he'll grab your phone and take plenty of Instagrammable photos if you don't have an attending friend to do it for you.
These experiences all seemed distinctly "Kyoto" to us. But there's another thing that may be even more characteristic of this city. Temples. There are at least 1,600 of them. Where to even start? That's the subject of my next story.
Japan's Kansai region contains six of the country's top seven prefectures in terms of national treasures. Any fan of history, art and architecture is likely to be happier if they spend the bulk of their trip in this region forming a belt across Japan's main island of Honshu, about 2/3ds of the way down its length. Osaka, Nara and Kyoto form a tight little triangle in the broad plains and valleys here, with less than an hour between each by train. You could easily tour all the major sites from any one, and most people choose either Osaka or Kyoto as a base. We split our time between Osaka (four nights) and Kyoto (six nights), and were glad we had time to get to know both. 
I preferred the streets around the Yasaka-no-tou temple, a five-story wooden pagoda that's become the quintessential picture of Gion. Though the streets up here ... you're hiking uphill from the river ... are still packed with tourists, there are fewer big groups and more interesting shops. The most beautiful street is called Nineizaka, really just a pedestrianised lane that runs north-south, curving down and back up a little valley just above the pagoda. (The Park Hyatt Kyoto fronts onto the lane's northeastern edge, making a great landmark to find it.)
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