Kiyomizu-dera to Gion

Kiyomizu-dera, 6:00. ¥500, an hour on the stage and round to the Okunoin terrace for the view back at the main hall, and down past the Otowa waterfall with no queue at it.

Sannenzaka and Ninenzaka. Two stepped lanes falling away north from the temple approach, preserved districts with no overhead cables and controlled shopfronts. At seven in the morning they are stone, timber and nobody. At eleven they are the most congested two hundred metres in Kyoto.

The Yasaka pagoda. Hokan-ji, the five-storey pagoda that appears in every photograph of Kyoto, framed at the bottom of a lane. The classic shot needs an empty street, which is available for about an hour a day.

Kodai-ji and Maruyama Park. Kodai-ji charges and opens later; Maruyama is free and always open, and its weeping cherry is the most famous single tree in the city.

Yasaka Shrine, then Gion. The shrine has no gate and no closing time, and walking out of its western gate puts you at the top of Shijo with Gion below you.

Kyoto’s congestion is a timetable problem. The temples open between 8:30 and 9:00, the coach tours are built around that, and by ten the eastern hills are at capacity. There is exactly one lever available, and it is the 6:00 opening at Kiyomizu-dera.

Two and a half hours is a very long head start. By the time the first coaches reach the temple you are a kilometre downhill and finished with the difficult part. You then arrive in Gion at around nine, as the coffee shops open, having done the whole thing.

The cost is that the shops and tea houses on Sannenzaka are shut while you walk past them. Most people find that a good trade – the lanes are the attraction and the shops sell roughly what every other tourist lane in Japan sells – but if the shopping is the point for you, this is not the plan.

These are residential streets. Photography restrictions have been progressively tightened across the district, tripods are unwelcome on the stepped lanes, and the residential alleys off the main run are not part of the route. In Gion at the bottom, the private alleys off Hanamikoji have been closed to visitors since April 2024, with signs warning of fines up to ¥10,000.

Eating while walking is discouraged throughout Higashiyama and is explicitly prohibited in Nishiki Market across the city. Eat standing where you bought it.

Practical notes: the lanes are stone steps, worn and slippery in rain, and not wheelchair-accessible – Kiyomizu-dera itself is, via the Chawan-zaka service road. Afterwards, Okutan serves yudofu below the temple, though it closes Thursdays, and Matsuba at the bottom of Shijo does nishin soba until 20:30.