Kyoto Hidden Gems

Kyoto was the imperial capital for over a thousand years and it is laid out like one: a grid borrowed from Chinese city planning, numbered streets running east to west, with mountains closing three sides. That basin is why the summers are so oppressive and the winters so damp, and it is also why the temples are pushed up onto the slopes at the edges — the flat centre was for living and trading. The craft economy that served the court survives as working businesses rather than displays, so the dyers in Nishijin and the knife-makers and confectioners around the old market streets are shops you can buy from. The other thing to understand is that Kyoto Prefecture is not Kyoto City: north of the mountains the land drops to the Sea of Japan at Amanohashidate and Ine, where boathouses stand with their ground floors open to the water, and almost nobody who visits the city goes there.