Kyoto City Navigation Tips

A lot of people ask me to visit certain locations in Kyoto on the same tour without realizing how spread-out Kyoto actually is. In an attempt to help you understand, I’ve modified an official Kyoto city Map (free, available online at https://global.kyoto.travel/resource/global/download/223-pdf.pdf ) and posted it below this article. Please refer to my scribbled-on map while reading this.

The main and most popular “touristy” areas are all clustered within walking distance in the central area near Shijo street (including Gion to the east and Nishiki Market at the very center), but most other popular attractions sweep in a distant wide wheel around this zone.

The “Wheel” of Kyoto is arranged as follows:

• To the Northwest by the mountains sit Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion), Ryoan-ji, Arashiyama (with it’s famous Bamboo Forest, and including the Sagano Scenic Railroad).

• To the Northeast by other mountains sit Ginkaku-ji (Silver Pavilion) and the Philosopher’s Path, especially gorgeous in springtime.

• In the Southeast hills are Fushimi Inari Taisha, Toufuku-ji (and very SE, Fushimi town, Uji and then Nara).

• And just to the East of Gion is Yasaka Shrine, entryway to the winding hillside shopping streets which pass dozens of shrines, temples and pagodas on their snakelike way up to the highest point, where Kiyomizu-dera perches on Higashiyama (the east hill) area looking down on the entire city.

To the South of the main tourist areas is located Kyoto Station itself, from which we must venture to reach the other areas, and must return to depart the city for other major cities.

You can generally calculate between 45 min to 1 hour travel time going from any one segment of the “wheel” described across to the opposite side of Kyoto city. Yes, that’s right… travel going just across Kyoto eats up significant time! And it usually means that attempting to see too much results in not seeing everything you had planned...

North to south on the same side, transportation will be faster as there are many subways and trains; while east to west is slower, especially at the northern end, where there are NO trains across the rivers and the buses are both crowded and required.

Taxis cost much more than transit, and may actually take longer, as the vehicle sits in traffic that trains and subways fly past. The main time I find them useful is in crossing east-west or west-east at the northern end of Kyoto city. Still expensive, but useful.

Let's say you're on one of my eight-hour tours starting at the Kobe or Osaka ports. Unless you want to take a different tour and meet me/dropoff in Kyoto Station, that means I escort you to and from your cruise ship and that time's part of your tour... So for Osaka we lose 70 minutes (~35 min x2) and for Kobe we lose 120 minutes (~60 min x2). If coming from Kobe, we will only have 6 hours in-city. No time to waste!

Each time we cross from one "area" (as described above) to another, we will lose another hour or more just riding on transit there and back. We can see that clustering our areas of interest leaves us with much more time to see each one. Try to plan to see everything in one area, then move to another area.

In reality, with walking time, slow crowds, bathroom breaks, stops to buy drinks/snacks, lunch, and all the other annoyances of life, I find that our groups average only one major "tourist site" per two hours in the city. Hitting two of the "Wheel" sections and the center is quite busy. Hitting sites in three of them means an all-day tour, eight hours or more in the city itself.

I hope this information helps you in better planning your Kyoto ventures.