Seven Days in Kyoto — a trip plan, finished

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THE RULE OF THIS MAP

110 px = 1 km. North is up. North is also uphill.

Seven ink routes, one per day, each tinted with that day's colour — the swatch strip under the spine is this map's legend, D1 to D7 left to right, and every card in every column carries the same tick.

Day 4 is the only line that leaves the basin. You can see the hard day before you read a single time.

THE DOCTRINE

Every day has an A and a B. A is booked. B is walkable from A. If it rains before 09:00 we take B and lose nothing but the photographs.

Every fixed time on this board exists to buy one thing: the right to stop looking at the phone. That is what the ledger below is for. Nothing on it is aspirational — every number was checked against the place that charges it.

CALENDAR HAZARDS — we checked

TUE 24 · Kikunoi Honten closes 1st and 3rd Tuesdays. The 24th is the FOURTH Tuesday of November 2026. It is open. We checked.

WED 25 · Nishiki has no market-wide closing day, but stalls close individually and Wednesday is the most common. Day 5 avoids it entirely.

THU 26 · Okutan Nanzen-ji is closed Thursdays. Day 6 eats at Nanzenji Junsei instead (from ¥3,630, no fixed closing day).

THE BOOK-BY LEDGER9 rows

Item	Opens	Book by	Status	Cost
Saihō-ji (moss) — Thu 26	intosaihoji.com, 2 mths ahead	or postcard, postmarked 21 Sep – 21 Oct	●	¥4,000 pp (+¥110 online fee)
Kikunoi Honten — Tue 24	phone 075-561-0015	well ahead, via the hotel concierge	●	¥33,000 pp + 15% service
Kyoto-Gion Nanba — Fri 27	its own site	the counterweight dinner	◐	¥11,000 / ¥15,000 pp
Machiya, 6 nights	open now	before the yen moves again	●	¥28,400 / night
HARUKA KIX→Kyoto — Sat 21	airport counter	passport + Temporary Visitor status	○	¥2,200 pp one-way
Eizan 'Ee Kippu' 1-day — Tue 24	Demachiyanagi window	buy on the morning	○	¥1,200 pp
Kurama Onsen — Tue 24	no booking, 10:00–21:00 daily	open; call 075-741-2131 to confirm prices on the day	○	approx ¥2,500–2,700 pp (in+out)
Tōfuku-ji — Sun 22	walk up, opens 08:30	autumn window: no combined ticket	○	¥1,000 pp (Tsūtenkyō+Kaisandō)
Kiyomizu night viewing — Sat 21	no reservation	2025 ran 22 Nov–7 Dec; 2026 TBC	▲ ⛆	¥500 pp

●  booked      ◐  waitlisted      ○  walk-up      ▲  weather / confirm on the day      ⛆  see the B-side

MONEY · two people, seven days10 rows

Line	Two of us	Note
Machiya, 6 nights	¥170,400	¥28,400/night
Kyoto lodging tax	¥12,000	NEW 1 Mar 2026 — ¥1,000 pp/night in the ¥20,000–49,999 tier
Kikunoi Honten, Tue 24	¥75,900	¥33,000 pp + 15% service, tax incl.
Kyoto-Gion Nanba, Fri 27	¥22,000	¥11,000 pp — the mid-priced counterweight
HARUKA KIX→Kyoto ×2	¥4,400	¥2,200 pp; ICOCA & HARUKA package ended Sept 2023
ICOCA ×2	¥4,000	¥1,500 usable each + ¥500 refundable deposit
Subway & Bus 1-Day ×2 days ×2	¥4,400	¥1,100 each; the ¥700 bus-only pass is discontinued
Eizan Ee Kippu ×2 (Day 4)	¥2,400	¥1,200 each; single fare is ¥470
Temples, gardens, baths	¥21,000	incl. Saihō-ji ¥8,000 and Kurama Onsen approx ¥5,000–5,400
Everything else, 7 days	¥90,000	food not listed above, coffee, the ceramics argument

Locked-in = 61%. That is the number that lets me say yes to things.

Ink

THE LINE — compact

KIX → Kyoto on the HARUKA, ¥2,200 pp with the passport and Temporary Visitor status, 75–80 min. Buy ICOCA at the same window.

Bags to the machiya, then Nishiki on foot (stores typically 10:00–18:00, hours vary stall to stall; eating while you walk is a request, not a ban). East through Gion at dusk.

Kiyomizu-dera 06:00–18:00, ¥500. Autumn night viewing: LAST YEAR it ran 22 Nov – 7 Dec, 17:30–21:00, ¥500, no reservation. 2026 dates not yet published — if the 21st is outside the window we simply go in daylight and come back on Day 5.

No table today. Day 1 has one job: arrive without a schedule.

0:11

Kyoto Station — the departure chimes, 36 seconds

Playing • Spatial Audio

⛆ B-SIDE — Day 1

If it is raining at landing: skip Gion, stay under the arcades. Nishiki is roofed end to end, and so is Teramachi north of it.

Kiyomizu in rain is genuinely better — the stage streams and the city below goes soft — but the night viewing is the thing we would lose. Move it to Day 5's evening, which is already an east-side night.

THE LINE · Day 2 — the only alarm that matters11 rows

Time	Move	Detail
05:10	Up. No discussion.	Clothes laid out the night before.
05:30	Taxi, booked last night	Fushimi Inari is free and open 24h — the gate is never the problem, the light is.
06:00	Enter at the main gate	No admission, no closing day. Dark, lamps still on.
06:20–07:00	Climb to Yotsutsuji	30–40 min up. The tunnel is empty until roughly 08:00.
07:00	Decide: turn or continue	Full summit loop is ~4 km / 2–3 hrs. Mt. Inari is 233 m.
08:00	Down, coffee, breakfast	Anything at the base is open by now.
08:40	JR Nara Line, one stop	Inari → Tōfukuji, then walk.
09:00	Tōfuku-ji — AUTUMN RULES	15 Nov–7 Dec: opens 08:30, closes 16:30, entry closes 16:00.
	Tsūtenkyō + Kaisandō ¥1,000	Up from ¥600, and the COMBINED TICKET IS NOT SOLD in this window.
	Hōjō garden ¥500 separately	Foliage peaks mid-to-late November. We are inside it.
12:30	Out before the coach tours	Then the Kamo, north, on foot, for as long as the legs hold.

⛆ B-SIDE — Day 2

Inari in rain is still worth the alarm: the torii go black-red and the paths empty completely. Bring the small towel, not the umbrella — the climb is stairs.

If it is properly hammering, hold Inari for Day 7's morning (Uji is on the same line) and spend today under Tōfuku-ji's covered bridges instead. That is the whole swap; nothing else moves.

THE LINE — compact

West first, early: the grove is only quiet before nine, and the whole point of going west is to be leaving while everyone else arrives.

Then east, all the way across the bowl, on the Subway & Bus 1-Day Pass (¥1,100 pp — the ¥700 bus-only pass has been discontinued since 2023; a flat city bus fare is ¥230, so the pass pays for itself on the fifth ride).

No table today on purpose. Four walls of train times is the failure mode of a board like this. Today is: go west early, come back slowly, eat where you end up.

Rain on cedar — 84 seconds, the sound the B-side is written for

Playing • Spatial Audio

⛆ B-SIDE — Day 3

This is the designated wet day. If the forecast is bad for the week, it lands here and nothing breaks.

West side in rain: the grove is better, the river is better, the crowd is a third. If it is too heavy even for that, go east instead and spend the afternoon indoors on the Philosopher's Path end — which is Day 5's route, so the two days simply trade.

THE LINE · Day 4 — mountain, water, bath, dinner15 rows

Time	Move	Detail
08:10	Walk to Demachiyanagi	Buy the 'Ee Kippu' 1-day pass, ¥1,200 pp (single is ¥470).
08:30	Eizan Railway → Kurama	~30 min, every 15–20 min.
	Momiji Tunnel	2025 ran 7–24 Nov, sunset to ~21:00; slow-running 7 Nov–12 Dec, extended to 30 Nov. 2026 UNANNOUNCED as of Aug 2026.
	→ so	If 2026 repeats 2025's window, only the 21st–24th of our trip fall inside it. Re-check eizandensha.co.jp in October.
09:05	Kurama-dera gate	¥500 aizenryo. 09:00–16:15. Cable car ¥200 — first up 08:40, last down 16:25.
	VERIFY BEFORE COMMITTING	Trail status for 2026 is unconfirmed. Check kuramadera.or.jp or ask at Kurama station; the Eizan train back from Kurama is the fallback.
09:30–11:00	Over the top to Kibune	~3.9 km station to station, 2–3 hours; ~1 hour temple-to-Kibune.
	Difficulty	Moderate — lots of steps and a steep rooty descent; proper shoes.
	Why moderate, precisely	Niōmon→Hondō is a continuous stone stair; the Kinone-michi is exposed cedar roots that need foot placement; the Kibune-side descent is a long irregular stair — and in late November it is leaf litter over wet stone.
11:30	Kifune Shrine	Free, open year-round. 06:00–20:00 from 1 May–30 Nov, so we get the late hours. Mizuura mikuji approx ¥200.
13:00	Lunch in Kibune	Indoors. See Band D for what we do not get.
15:00	Kurama Onsen	10:00–21:00 daily, 年中無休, 10 min walk from the station.
	Prices, approximate	Rotenburo approx ¥1,400 weekday / ¥1,600 weekend; indoor+outdoor set with yukata and towel approx ¥2,500–2,700. Confirm on the day: 075-741-2131.
17:00–18:00	BLANK. See below.	Not a gap. A purchase.
18:30	Kikunoi Honten	075-561-0015. Fourth Tuesday — open. We checked.

The bonshō — one strike, sixty seconds of decay. Top of the band, west side.

Playing • Spatial Audio

0:20

The Kibune stream — bottom of the band, east side. It blooms early and stays.

Playing • Spatial Audio

17:00–18:00 is blank. On purpose.
Six days of this board exist to make this hour possible. Do not fill it.

18:30 · KIKUNOI HONTEN

Courses ¥22,000 / ¥33,000 / ¥55,000 / ¥77,000 pp, tax included — plus 15% service, charged separately. Prices revised 1 Dec 2024. Tel 075-561-0015.

Closed 1st and 3rd Tuesdays. The 24th is the fourth. Reserve well ahead via the hotel concierge.

We take the ¥33,000. The pen line running west from this card goes to its row in the ledger: this is the single biggest number on the board, and it is booked before the flights because it is the hardest to move.

▁▂▃▅▂▇▂▅▃▂▁▂▃▁▂▃▅▂▁▃▂▁▂▁▃▂▁▁▂▁

KAWADOKO · KIBUNE                     —:—

The river platforms run May – September. They are built out over the water and you eat two feet above it with the stream going under the floor.

We are seven weeks late. This is the one thing on this board we do not get.

⛆ B-SIDE — Day 4

If the trail is closed, or the gate says no, or it is genuinely wet: ride to Kibune-guchi instead, walk the valley road up to Kifune Shrine (flat, twenty minutes, lit stone stairs), then take the Eizan train back from Kurama for the onsen.

The descent is the part that fails in weather — a long irregular stair under late-November leaf litter on wet stone. You lose the ridge and keep the water, the bath and the dinner. Nothing that is booked is touched.

THE STALE-ADVICE TRAP

Half the internet still says Kurama Onsen is permanently closed. That is 2021–2024 information: it shut in the pandemic and reopened in November 2024. The official site, kurama-spa.com, is live, carries no closure notice, and is still posting operational updates.

A planner who trusted the top search result would have cut the best hour of the best day. Check the operator's own page, in its own language, before you believe a listing.

THE LINE — compact

Ginkaku-ji 08:30–17:00, ¥1,000. Go at opening; it is one direction only and the queue compounds.

Then the Philosopher's Path south on foot, an hour if you stop. Nanzen-ji grounds and the Suirokaku aqueduct are FREE, 08:40–17:00 (Hōjō garden ¥600, Sanmon ¥600 — the aqueduct is the free thing worth the trip).

Lunch: Okutan Nanzen-ji, yudofu, single set ¥3,500. Closed Thursdays — today is Wednesday, so today is the day. They stop when the tofu sells out, so go before 13:00. No official website; just turn up.

Evening in Gion. Today we deliberately do NOT go to Nishiki: Wednesday is the heaviest day for individual stall closures.

⛆ B-SIDE — Day 5

The Philosopher's Path in rain is a worse walk and a better photograph, so the rule is: shorten it, don't cancel it. Bus down Shirakawa-dōri and pick it up at Hōnen-in.

Nanzen-ji's aqueduct is free and the brick arches hold rain beautifully. If today collapses entirely, this is the day that absorbs Kiyomizu's night viewing from Day 1.

THE LINE — compact

Saihō-ji is the prepaid anchor and it has a fixed start time: everything today is built backwards from it.

Morning: Kamigamo-jinja, then down the Kamo on foot to Demachiyanagi, where the two rivers meet. Flat, free, and the best hour of walking in the city.

Lunch: Okutan is CLOSED on Thursdays. Nanzenji Junsei instead, from ¥3,630, no fixed closing day.

Subway & Bus 1-Day Pass ¥1,100 pp covers the day, including the run west to Matsuo.

SAIHŌ-JI — the prepaid anchor

BOTH routes are current, and we used the postcard one:

· Online at intosaihoji.com — opens two months ahead, ¥4,000 plus a ¥110 fee.
· Return postcard, postmarked two months to one month before, ¥4,000 cash on the day, to: 56 Matsuo Jingatanicho, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto 615-8286.

~90 minutes including sutra-copying. Start times are fixed and latecomers are refused. Age 13 and over.

You copy the sutra first. Only then do they let you into the garden. That order is the entire point.

⛆ B-SIDE — Day 6 · THE HONEST ONE

This is the one day with no B. Saihō-ji is prepaid, timed, and unmoveable, and a moss garden in rain is the best version of it anyway.

So: if the forecast turns, swap this whole day with Day 7. The swap IS the plan. Uji does not care which day you come, and Saihō-ji does.

Write the failure state down. A plan that pretends nothing can go wrong is a plan you will abandon on the first wet morning.

THE LINE · Day 7 — the departure, worked backwards9 rows

Time	Move	Detail
07:30	Bags down, check out	Machiya holds luggage until 18:00 — confirmed.
08:10	JR Nara Line south → Uji	Same line as Day 2's Inari. ICOCA covers it.
09:00	Byōdō-in	Go straight to the Phoenix Hall while the pond is still glass.
10:30	Tea, properly, in Uji	This is what Uji is for. Sit down for it; do not take it away.
12:30	Back north	Uji → Kyoto Station, ~30 min.
14:00	Last hour, no temples	One street, one shop, one coffee. Buy the thing you keep thinking about.
15:30	Collect bags	Then Kyoto Station.
16:00	HARUKA → KIX	75–80 min. ¥2,200 pp. Reserved, because the last train of a trip is not the place to gamble.
	If Day 6 and Day 7 swapped	Uji moves to Thursday and this becomes the Saihō-ji day. Everything above still holds except the 08:10.

kyoto-bookings-nov-2026.pdf

PDF · every confirmation, in date order · 475 KB

⛆ B-SIDE — Day 7

If it rains: Byōdō-in's museum is indoors and the tea houses are the point anyway. Nothing here is weather-dependent, which is exactly why this is the day Day 6 swaps with.

And if the week has gone well, cut Uji entirely and walk the Kamo one more time. Leave wanting one more day. That is the correct amount of trip.

Lattice

Stop 1 of 7 · The bowl

Start by learning the city's shape. Kyoto sits in a bowl open only to the south — north is up, and north is also uphill. Read the seven ink routes: six stay in the basin, one leaves it. You now know which day is the hard one before you have read a single time.