I started coming to Kyoto in the mid-2010s on the sort of three-day Japan trips where every hour is already booked. What I remember from those first visits isn’t the temples — it’s the afternoon I missed a bullet train because the innkeeper in Higashiyama was still slicing breakfast pickles at 8.55am, and the walk I did that night from the station back to Gion because I’d lost the map and the light off the Kamo river looked like it needed to be seen slowly.
I kept going back. A Kyoto-only week. Autumn colour in 2019, then a snow morning at Ryōan-ji a few years later. A ryokan night in the Arashiyama hills, a week in Nishijin in a rented machiya, three nights in Kinosaki that were supposed to be one. Most of the writing on this site is from those returns — the hotels I’ve actually stayed in, the day trips that reward the early start, and the shrines nobody queues for on a Tuesday morning.
What this site is for
If you’re here planning a first visit to Kyoto and want a short, opinionated answer to where should I stay, start with the area-by-area hotel guide. If you’re on a repeat trip and want to get out of central Higashiyama, the Miyama day trip is the article I wish someone had written for me. If the dates are already set, the four-day itinerary is the template most of my own Kyoto weeks still follow.
Everything on the site is written by me. No guest posts, no paid placements, no “top 10” listicles that are actually ranked by affiliate commission. If I don’t like a hotel, it isn’t on the list. If I haven’t stayed somewhere, I’ll tell you that explicitly and you can weight the recommendation accordingly.
A note on affiliate links
Some links on this site — mostly to Booking.com — are affiliate links. If you click through and book, the site earns a small commission at no cost to you. Those links pay for the hosting and the trips that turn into new articles. I don’t change a recommendation because a hotel pays a higher commission, and I’ve left hotels off these lists that pay very well because they’re not worth your money.
Get in touch
If you spot something out of date, or you’ve stayed somewhere you think should be on one of these lists, I’d like to hear about it. The contact page has a simple form. I read everything that comes through.