Kyoto Travel Guide

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Kyoto is the heart of Japan. This may surprise some visitors – isn’t Tokyo this huge capitol metropolis? – but the history and beauty of the Land of the Rising Sun is all focused in this older city, from which the emperors ruled for almost 1100 years. Kyoto is a very safe place – that is why it was chosen as the capitol centuries ago. After bouncing around between a few locations and being treated to extreme weather or earthquakes every few years, in 794 AD the royal family moved to Miyako, or Heian-kyo, later renamed Kyoto (Capitol City). The ground is relatively stable, suffering little from the 10,00 earthquakes that hit Japan each year (don’t worry, most are too small to be felt). It is far enough from the Pacific and Japan Sea that storm surges aren’t a problem, and the mountains that surround the city on three sides shear off most of the wind from typhoons. As a bonus, Kyoto is also near a variety of exciting tourist spots in their own right. Nara was a short-lived capitol in early Japanese history, and hosts the oldest wooden structures in the world. Osaka is the economic heart of Western Japan and, as previously mentioned, offers all the electric paradigm excitement of Tokyo. And Kobe is an old beautiful port town, with a bay to the south and mountains to the north, where the oldest foreign communities all settled. A day trip away is Himeji, home of the White Crane Castle, often considered the benchmark for Japanese feudal architecture. Taken together, this region of Kansai offers the most diverse and complete experience Japan, or Nihon, has to offer.

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