Okay, maybe this is a long shot, but I’d really like to rent a motorcycle and ride around the Kyoto area, especially some of the scenic roads that local riders enjoy. I don’t really want to do it alone, though, so I was wondering if anyone has any leads on an English-speaking guide who rides motorcycles and might be willing to show me around the area for a day or two by bike.

They don’t necessarily have to be specifically a motorcycle tour guide, just someone who works as a guide, rides motorcycles, knows the area well, and would be down for something like this. Or even if anyone on here is interested themselves, I’d definitely be open to that. I pay well and, of course, I’d cover all expenses for the day, including petrol.

I already know where I’m going to rent a motorcycle, and I’m a proficient, regular rider back home in the States, so no need to worry about that. Just looking for someone local to ride with who can show me some great roads and places I probably wouldn’t find on my own.

I’ll be in the area from the end of September into early October. If anyone has any recommendations, contacts, or is interested themselves, please let me know. TIA!

Hi all! I'll be travelling to Japan/Kyoto for the first time with my partner in November and was hoping for some advice on our itinerary. We're in Kyoto for 4 days and want to see as much as we can, but also don't want to burn ourselves out as our Japan itinerary is pretty packed as a whole. We're staying in Gion as it seems to have good access to transport and entertainment.

Our current itinerary is:

5th November:

• Travel from Osaka in the morning
• Rent Kimonos and transport to Kiyomizu-dera, walk back to Gion. Tea ceremony at Gion
• Evening exploring Gion

6th November:

• Travel early to Fushimi Inari
• Explore the area, hike Mount Inari, Tofuku-ji Temple, Fushimi Sake Village
• Explore evening autumn light display at Toji temple (If they're on? I find conflicting information online on dates for autumn lights)

7th November:

• Travel to Mount Kurama
• Explore and hike to Kibune, visit Kifune shrine.
• Transport back to Gion, see Momiji Tunnel light show on the way back

8th November:

• Transport to Arashiyama
• Explore Arashiyama Bamboo forest, Okochi Sanso Garden, Tenru-ji Temple, Monkey Park
• Shinkansen to Tokyo in the evening

I've been told we're missing some pretty big sites like Nijo Castle, Kinkaku-ji and Eikan-do Temple. Would anything we've got planned be worth swapping for these? My thoughts are maybe the Mount Kurama day as we're already hiking Mount Inari the day prior, but I've also heard this is the most unique experience compared to the others. Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Most guides just say Nijo Castle is closed Dec 29-31 and stop there. The castle's own site (nijo-jocastle.city.kyoto.lg.jp) lists two more closure rules stacked on top of that, both easy to get burned by if you're only checking English pages.

Castle grounds: open 8:45-16:00 for entry (gates close 17:00). Closed only Dec 29-31.

Ninomaru Palace (the National Treasure interior most people actually come for) has its own separate closure days:

• Dec 26-28 and Jan 1-3, same as everywhere else.
• Every Tuesday in January, July, August and December specifically - not Tuesdays year-round, just those four months. If that Tuesday happens to fall on a public holiday, the palace stays open that day instead and the closure shifts to the following day.

So if you're in Kyoto in summer, a plain Tuesday in August is exactly when Ninomaru Palace's interior is shut, even though the grounds and gardens are operating normally and nothing on-site warns you in advance.

Honmaru Palace (a separate ticketed building, reopened to the public a few years ago) runs on a different schedule again: closed the third Monday of every month plus the following day, in addition to Dec 26-28 and Jan 1-3. If that third Monday is a public holiday, Honmaru Palace can be viewed that day - the site doesn't spell out whether the following-day closure still shifts in that case, so if your visit lands near a holiday Monday I'd confirm on the castle's site that same week rather than assume.

Source: https://nijo-jocastle.city.kyoto.lg.jp/ (hours/closure info is on the homepage itself, checked today)

Since March 1, 2026, Kyoto's per-person, per-night lodging tax bands changed noticeably at the upper end. Checked this against the city's own tax page and its official notice directly, since this is exactly the kind of thing older travel guides and blog posts (anything written before this year) would still have wrong.

Room rate per person per night → old tax (through Feb 28, 2026) → new tax (from Mar 1, 2026)

• Under ¥6,000 → ¥200 → ¥200 (unchanged)
• ¥6,000–¥19,999 → ¥200 → ¥400
• ¥20,000–¥49,999 → ¥500 → ¥1,000
• ¥50,000–¥99,999 → ¥1,000 → ¥4,000
• ¥100,000 and up → ¥1,000 → ¥10,000

A few things worth knowing about how it actually works:

The "room rate" the bands are based on is the bare room/service charge only — it excludes meals and consumption tax, so don't calculate your bracket off a headline price that includes breakfast or a kaiseki dinner.

It applies to every kind of overnight stay: hotels, ryokan, guesthouses, and even unlicensed minpaku. There's no carve-out by accommodation type.

It's collected by the property, not paid separately to the city, so it should show up as a line item on your final bill or receipt. If you booked through an OTA before March and the total didn't obviously include it, worth asking at check-in rather than assuming it's baked in.

Exemptions exist for students on school-organized trips and preschool-age children on organized outings from their own school/facility — not something most leisure travelers will hit, but worth knowing it's not a blanket child exemption.

Sources: city.kyoto.lg.jp – official tax page, ja.kyoto.travel – official notice of the revision.

I’ll be in Kyoto from August 29 until the evening of September 1, then I’ll be heading to Osaka.
I’ve been to Kyoto once before on a day trip, when I visited the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji) and a few temples. This time I’m traveling with my family, including my 6-year-old son.
I really like temples and traditional architecture, but Kyoto has so many temples that I don’t want this trip to turn into just going from one temple to another. I’d love to experience more traditional Japanese culture through activities where we can actually participate, interact, or do something ourselves.
For example, I found **Uzumasa Kyoto Village (Toei Kyoto Studio Park /** **太秦映画村****)** and thought it could be really fun, especially for my son.
Are there any other places or experiences like this in Kyoto that are interesting, family-friendly, and maybe not the most obvious or overly touristy choices?
I’d especially appreciate recommendations for traditional experiences, hands-on activities, interesting neighborhoods, local food experiences, workshops, or places that locals enjoy.
Thanks in advance!

Hi,
We are visiting Kyoto and we only brought hand luggage. We bought a few things and now I think it would be better to have another piece of luggage. I do not want to spend a lot of money and I was hoping to get a medium sized one so I can fit one of mine inside for now as we still have more places to visit. But we will probably accumulate more as we travel. We rarely buy anything in trips, but it’s different this time I guess.
So, where can I buy very cheap luggage in Kyoto?
I have been to bookoff and don quijote and the cheapest one I found was 14k yen. It’s a lot more than I hoped to pay.
At don Quijote they had so many and maybe I didn’t see something cheaper. So I hope someone here could give me some tips.

Thanks !

The Kyoto City Tourism Association keeps a running page of facility closures and event cancellations, updated as things change (last updated Aug 26, 2026 as of writing). A few entries are long enough, or recent enough, that they're worth flagging before you build an itinerary around a place that turns out to be unavailable.

Enryaku-ji (Mt. Hiei) — interior worship at the Konpon Chudo, the head temple's main hall, is closed Jan 6, 2026 through roughly Jan 2028 for a major restoration (about two years). A stand-in image of the principal Buddha and the "eternal flame" are on limited display at the Mando hall in the meantime. The Sakamoto cable also shuts Feb 24–Mar 1, 2026 for maintenance.

Nanzen-in (Nanzen-ji subtemple) — closed until roughly spring 2027 for roof re-shingling.

Myoshin-ji — the Daikuri (great kitchen building) has been closed since May 2024 for about two years, possibly longer. The Hatto with its famous dragon ceiling stays open as normal.

Zuishin-in — the Okushoin (inner study hall) is closed mid-May 2025 through roughly March 2027. Its Kano-school fusuma paintings are inaccessible for the duration; the rest of the temple is open as usual.

Koto-in (Daitoku-ji subtemple) — closed indefinitely for repair work, no reopening date given.

Jishu-jinja — closed since Aug 2022 for an estimated 5–6 years for shrine building restoration.

Fuzoku Hakubutsukan (Costume Museum) — closed since April 2025 through roughly autumn 2028 for relocation and rebuilding.

Kiyomizu Sannenzaka Museum — closed since March 2025, reopening date not yet set.

Kongo Nogakudo (Noh theater) — closed May 1 through Aug 31, 2026 for renovation. Its two regular performances that would've fallen in this window moved to Kyoto Prefectural ALTI hall instead.

Tofuku-ji — one-day full closure of the paid areas (Tsutenkyo bridge, Kaisando, Hojo garden) on Oct 1, 2026 for a hall dedication ceremony. The temple grounds themselves stay open that day.

Yogen-in — no fixed visiting days at all, they post open days on their own Instagram and nowhere else.

Source: ja.kyoto.travel closures notice, checked this morning. It's a live page that gets updated as things change, so if you're planning specifically around any of these, worth a re-check closer to your dates rather than trusting this list months out.

If you've seen advice here or elsewhere to just buy the ¥700 bus-only day pass at a kiosk or convenience store, that ticket stopped being sold on 30 September 2023 and stopped working entirely after 31 March 2024. It's not a rare-edge-case thing either, it still shows up in a lot of guides and older forum posts as the default recommendation. Checked this against Kyoto City Transportation Bureau's own page this morning since I wanted the exact dates rather than "a while back."

What replaced it is two different things, and they're not interchangeable.

The subway+bus 1-day pass (地下鉄・バス1日券) is ¥1,100 for adults, ¥550 for children. It covers both subway lines plus city buses, and most Kyoto Bus, Keihan Bus, and JR Bus routes. It's valid until service ends on the calendar day you use it, not for a rolling 24 hours. It also comes with small discounts at places like Nijo Castle, the Kyoto Railway Museum, and the Kyoto Museum of Culture.

The IC 24H ticket (地下鉄・バスIC24Hチケット) is a different mechanism entirely. It's tied to your IC card through the city's point program, you register a start time at least 5 minutes before you want it active, then ride normally for the next 24 hours. Every fare gets deducted as you go, and anything you spend over ¥1,100 (¥550 for children) gets refunded back as points, so the net cost works out the same. The differences that actually matter: it runs 24 hours from whenever you start it rather than resetting at midnight, and it does not cover Keihan Bus, unlike the paper pass.

Worth knowing why the old pass was killed off in the first place: the city wants to push visitors off the buses and onto the subway to ease bus crowding, which is also why they keep running seasonal "please take the subway instead" bus-congestion campaigns during peak weeks. If you're doing the math on whether a day pass is worth it for your itinerary, the number to plan around is ¥1,100, not ¥700, and which of the two tickets fits depends on whether your day lines up with a calendar day or spans into the next morning.

Sources: city.kyoto.lg.jp/kotsu/page/0000028337.html (bus pass discontinuation) and city.kyoto.lg.jp/kotsu/page/0000316038.html (IC 24H ticket mechanics)

Hi! I’ll be in Japan on New Year’s Day and was wondering if there are any good sushi restaurants that are open on January 1st&2nd.

I know a lot of places close for the New Year holidays, so I’d really appreciate any recommendations. Thanks!

Hi there,

I'm wanting to know how crowded Kifune/Kurama gets in peak Autumn foliage.

I'm currently planning the Kyoto leg of my trip spanning 21 Nov - 25 Nov and am choosing what can be done in the afternoon since we'll hit a lot of the big sites early in the morning to beat the peak crowding.

It'll be a long weekend in Japan so I know crowds are inevitable but hoping someone could advise if Kifune gets to Kiyomizu-dera/Arashiyama levels or not.

Any input would be appreciated as I have scoured the internet far and wide and haven't found anything conclusive.

Has anyone been to the more recent years of this festival? Looking at going for it this year and it seems to be on the 8th November 2026.

Every year the "Kyoto autumn illumination 2026" listicles start circulating in summer with specific dates, and every year at least one of them is either last year's schedule copied forward or a guess dressed up as confirmed. Checked each of these against the temple's own site this morning (Aug 25) instead of an aggregator, so here's what's actually locked in right now versus what isn't.

Confirmed

Kiyomizu-dera — autumn night viewing Nov 21–30, open 6:00, closes 21:30 (last entry 21:00). One ticket covers the whole day, no re-entry needed. Source: kiyomizudera.or.jp

Eikan-do (Zenrin-ji) — two separate periods this year. Day exhibit (秋の寺宝展) runs Nov 11–Dec 6, reception 9:00–16:00, gate closes 17:00. Night illumination runs Nov 20–Dec 6, reception 17:30–20:30, gate closes 21:00, ¥1,000. These are a hard swap — you can't walk from the day session into the night one, you have to leave and buy a separate ticket, and the fee changed this year per their own notice. Source: eikando.or.jp

Not announced yet as of this morning

Kodai-ji — regular hours are 9:00–17:30, and their site already states that during the night period, hours extend to 22:00 (last entry 21:30) on a single ticket, no swap needed. But the actual autumn date range isn't posted yet, only a summer event is currently listed.

Shoren-in — same situation. Their site currently shows July 17–Aug 23 (summer) as the confirmed illumination; autumn isn't up yet. Their companion event at Shogunzuka is listed as "undetermined."

Kyoto Botanical Garden — no illumination event on their site at all for this year as of today. They've run one in past autumns, so it's plausible, but there's nothing to point to yet.

Tofuku-ji — doesn't run night illumination at all, it's day-only. The autumn extended-hours dates for the bridge crossing aren't posted yet either.

If a site is showing you exact November dates for anywhere in the second group right now, it's either stale or a guess. Worth bookmarking the official page and checking back in September/October rather than booking travel around it early.

Small confession: I had the Eikan-do lightup dates off by nine days and the fee off by ¥400 in a comment here yesterday, because I'd trusted an aggregator instead of their own site. Fixed now, which is the whole reason for doing it the slow way here.

We are going to be in Japan during the silver week, and thought about Kyoto as those days for to stay.
GPT says that we will face lots of crowded-non available busses, and limitless time waiting for restaurants.
We are traveling with our 6m baby and if thats the case, we may choose different.
Anyone know how it should really look like?

Also, if we live Kyoto on the 22/09 heading Tokyo, would it be ok or we still won’t be able to catch a train?

Compiling a list of matcha spots for the Kyoto leg of a trip — splitting it by how far you're willing to go, and what actually makes each one different (there's a lot of overlap once you start looking, so the differentiator matters more than the name recognition).

In Kyoto city:

• Ippodo Tea, Main Store — the benchmark. 300+ years in business, this is where you go to actually learn to taste the difference between grades, not just buy a tin
• Marukyu Koyamaen, Motoan — a working producer, not a tourist-facing brand. Ceremonial-grade matcha for people who already know what they're looking for, minus the crowds
• Maccha House — the odd one out here: modern, dessert-driven, matcha as an ingredient rather than a ceremony. Good contrast stop after the more traditional shops, and convenient if you're already doing the Kiyomizu/Higashiyama walk. I included this one because it is the cheap, basic experience place, if you don't want to cough up more dough.

In Uji (easy day trip, ~30 min from Kyoto Station):

• Nakamura Tokichi, Main Branch — the photogenic one. Famous for matcha parfaits/soft serve, usually a line out the door — go for the dessert, not the quiet
• Tsujiri, Uji Main Store — this is the original, before it became the chain you'll see everywhere else in Japan
• Mitsuboshien Kanbayashi Sannyu — the anti-Nakamura Tokichi: old-school tea merchant, no parfait theatrics, just serious tea if that's what you're actually there for
• Tsuen Tea — right on Uji Bridge, founded in 1160, still run by the same family 24 generations later. Not the flashiest stop but arguably the most historically significant one on this list

Further out, in Wazuka (infrequent buses, more of a mission):

• d:matcha Kyoto — a working tea farm with field tours. This is where you go to see how the leaf actually gets grown, not just where it's sold. This is where you go for the full monty tour of matcha.
• Wazuka-cha Cafe — small-town cafe/shop sitting right in the middle of the actual tea fields, and also doubles as a de facto info desk for arranging farm tours. What I like about this place is that they have a private tree house room that you can rent out that gives you a nice view of the tea fields.

Wazuka is where a lot of Uji's tea is actually grown, so it's the "source" for anyone who wants to go past the retail experience — just a bigger logistical ask than everything else here.

Anyone been to these, or is there an obvious one missing — especially something in Kyoto city that isn't Ippodo/the usual tourist trail? Compiling these for a site I run, link's in my profile if useful.

EDIT: Small edit to add a sight that I thought was pretty interesting:

Fukujuen Uji (Uji Tea Factory) — Google Maps

This is a working tea factory in Uji, not just a retail shop. You can actually watch the roasting and grinding process as well as participate in a workshop to do the grinding yourself. You do some stone grinding for about 10 minutes and get some sweets to enjoy it with. I just happen to be watching this great vlog from sol life that details it. It also includes lunch at Nakamura Tokichi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owqpTdaYM3g&t=1799s

I posted a sunset table here yesterday, and almost every reply turned out to be about closing times rather than about light. So this morning I went through the Japanese-language pages of the places people ask about most and compared them with what English sources say. Here is what doesn't match. All checked 24 August 2026.

Otagi Nenbutsu-ji is closed on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

9:00–16:00, entry 1,000 yen. Plenty of English pages still list it as open daily at 300 yen. This is the one most likely to wreck a day, because it's a taxi ride up past Saga-Toriimoto and there is nothing else up there to pivot to.

https://www.otagiji.com/visit-en

Nijo Castle: the castle and the palace have different closing days.

The castle itself closes only 29–31 December. But the Ninomaru Palace — the National Treasure with the nightingale floors, which is presumably why you're going — is closed every Tuesday in January, July, August and December, plus 26–28 December and 1–3 January. If that Tuesday is a public holiday the palace opens and closes the following day instead.

The Honmaru Palace is advance-booking only with a timed ticket, 9:30–16:00, and closed on the third Monday of each month and the day after.

Castle admission is 8:45–16:00, gates close 17:00; Ninomaru reception closes 16:10. "Nijo Castle is open" and "you can see the palace" are not the same statement.

https://nijo-jocastle.city.kyoto.lg.jp/guide/annai/

Sanjusangendo changes its hours on 16 November, in the middle of foliage season.

1 April to 15 November: 8:30–17:00. 16 November to 31 March: 9:00–16:00. Last entry is 30 minutes before closing, so from 16 November your last entry is 15:30, not 16:30. 600 yen.

https://www.sanjusangendo.jp/visit/

Ginkaku-ji is 1,000 yen, not 500.

Kinkaku-ji is 500 and Ginkaku-ji is 1,000 — the pair are not symmetrical, and a lot of pages still show both at 500. Ginkaku-ji also switches to 9:00–16:30 from 1 December, against 8:30–17:00 the rest of the year.

https://www.shokoku-ji.jp/ginkakuji/access/

Kinkaku-ji does not permit photography intended for publication, and says social media explicitly.

From their own FAQ: snapshots with a small camera for personal enjoyment are permitted; photography for the purpose of publishing to third parties, SNS included, and commercial photography are refused. Group photos, video distribution and drones are also prohibited. I'm not telling anyone what to do with that. But it is the stated rule at one of the most photographed buildings in Japan, and essentially nobody arriving knows it.

https://www.shokoku-ji.jp/kinkakuji/faq/

Kiyomizu-dera opens at 6:00 every single day of the year.

Not seasonal, not a special event. Closing is what varies: 18:00 for most of the year, 18:30 from 1 July to 31 August, and 21:30 with last entry at 21:00 for the autumn night opening on 21–30 November. It is by a wide margin the earliest of the major sites, and the only one where an early start requires no planning at all.

https://www.kiyomizudera.or.jp/access.php

One I couldn't check: Ryoan-ji. Their site is returning an SSL error today, so I've left it out rather than repeat a figure from a third-party page. If you get through, the seasonal change is the thing to look at.

Two patterns, if you take nothing else:

Winter hours usually begin on 1 December — but not always. Sanjusangendo switches on 16 November and Ginkaku-ji on 1 December, in the same city, six days and one season apart. Check the date, not the season.

And a fixed closing day is rare at a Kyoto temple, which is exactly why it catches people out. When one exists, it is almost never in the English listing.

I live in Kyoto, and the same planning mistake comes up here constantly: someone schedules an outdoor stop "for sunset" at 16:00 in November, or budgets an hour of daylight in Arashiyama in December that doesn't exist.

So here is the table I check against. Calculated for central Kyoto (35.0116N, 135.7681E), all times JST. Dates run Sep 2026 through Aug 2027 — sunrise and sunset shift by a minute or two year to year, so it stays usable.

"Last usable light" is the end of civil twilight. After that you can still walk, but a phone camera stops coping and unlit paths get genuinely dark.

Three things in there that are worth knowing before you plan:

Sunset barely moves for three weeks in December. From about 1 to 20 December it sits at 16:45–16:46. "The sun goes down at quarter to five" is accurate enough to build a December day around.

The earliest sunset is not the winter solstice. It falls in early December, and the latest sunrise is in early January. They are weeks apart, which surprises people who assume both happen on the 21st.

Autumn foliage season runs straight into the shortest days of the year. Mid-to-late November sunset is 16:51 falling to 16:45. If you have illuminations pencilled in at 16:00, that is still full daylight — the lanterns don't really read until around 17:15.

Two caveats, because the table on its own will mislead you:

This is central Kyoto. Kibune, Kurama, Takao and the far side of Arashiyama sit in valleys and lose the sun noticeably earlier because of the ridgelines. I don't have a reliable number for that, so treat those places as "earlier than this table" rather than applying it directly.

And closing time is usually the tighter constraint, not the light. Plenty of temples stop admission at 16:00 or 16:30 regardless of how bright it still is, and several shorten their hours for the winter season. Check the specific place — the light being fine doesn't mean the gate is open.

Hello everyone! Not sure if this is the right subreddit, but I was hoping to find help looking for a restaurant I visited with my family in 2024. We just stumbled upon it, and I forgot to take a picture of the name. All I have are pictures of the entrance and the food we ordered. It was a restaurant specializing in wagyu beef, if I remember correctly.

I tried searching through google earth and google, going through the pictures one by one, but all the restaurant names are in Japanese.

We're hoping to go back if it isn't closed yet. I appreciate all the help!

Going through everything I got in from Japan, I remembered I had this paper ofuda that I got from Kinkaku-ji, It's a simple paper ofuda. It's essentially the receipt for my visit. Further, research reveals that it is a talisman of good luck and protection. What is the best, most respectful way to display it? Thank you.

I am looking to purchase a good Shiboridashi or a Tokoname Kyusu (shallow, wide pot) in Kyoto for proper brewing of gyokuro? I went to the To-ji Market, and while they had some VERY expensive Houhin's, they didn't have any shiboridashi. I found one vendor near Nijo that sells a wonderful model, around 9,000 yen, but before I pull the trigger I would like to search more to understand the market.