Kyoto

A wooden stage juts from the hillside, built without a single nail. Gates open at 6am. The hour after that is the only window when the boards are empty.

The whole mountain is the shrine: open around the clock, no ticket. Two hours up and back past the Senbon Torii. Beyond the Yotsutsuji lookout the crowd falls away and it turns into a plain hill walk.

The stretch everyone photographs is barely 200 metres, five minutes end to end. After eight in the morning nobody gets a frame without strangers in it. One side of the path is kept clear for rickshaws.

The Silver Pavilion was never actually silvered; only the name stuck. The Philosopher's Path starts at its gate and follows a canal for two kilometres, cherry branches leaning out over it. In early April the surface goes under petals.

The Ninomaru palace corridors are built to chirp underfoot, which makes walking quietly impossible. No photography inside. The palace closes on Tuesdays in December, January, July and August.

A thousand and one Kannon figures stand in a hall 120 metres long, and no cameras are allowed inside. You cross the floor in socks, and in winter the boards are cold enough to make thin ones a mistake.

A four-metre-wide arcade running 400 metres. The merchants ask you not to eat while walking — finish at the stall and hand the rubbish back. Most shutters are down by 5pm.

Since 2019 the private lanes off the main street ban photography outright, with fines posted on the signs. Geiko pass through briefly around 6pm on their way to work. Following one is a reportable offence.

The route through the grounds runs one way, so once you pass the pond view there is no going back. The gold reads brightest in morning light. After snow the queue forms before the gate opens.

In leaf season photography is banned on the Tsutenkyo bridge and guards keep you moving. Go down into the garden below and you can sit with the same maples. The last week of November is the reddest.

A Buddhist hall of 1053 in Uji, the building engraved on the 10-yen coin. The view across the pond comes with the garden ticket, but going inside the hall takes a separate timed ticket from the desk in the grounds.

Fifteen stones set in raked white gravel, placed so that from anywhere on the veranda one is always hidden behind another. The first half hour after opening, before the tour groups, is the quiet time.

Built in 1895 for the 1100th anniversary of Kyoto becoming capital, with a vermilion torii 24m tall at the Okazaki approach. The courtyard is open to walk in, but the garden behind has its own fee; in April its weeping cherries hang over the pond.

Pay at the great Zen temple's Sanmon gate to climb it and look out across Kyoto. Deeper in the grounds runs a red-brick aqueduct of 1890 that carried Lake Biwa water, its arches threading between temple halls and drawing a steady line of photographers.

A temple so known for autumn colour that it is nicknamed Eikan-do of the maples. Its main image is a rare Amida Buddha glancing back over the left shoulder. The night viewing in leaf season is ticketed apart from daytime entry.

Two mountain villages north of Kyoto, linked by a trail over exposed cedar roots from Kurama-dera to Kibune Shrine. The shrine sells fortune slips whose text appears only when floated on water. In summer, restaurants lay platforms over the stream.

A temple in Ohara village, roughly sixty minutes from Kyoto Station on the bus. Small stone child-Jizo figures with palms together peek out of the moss garden. Sit on the guest-hall veranda and matcha with a sweet is brought to you.

At 55m, Japan's tallest wooden pagoda rises southwest of Kyoto Station. On the 21st of every month the grounds host the Kobo-ichi flea market, packed from morning with antiques, old kimono and food stalls.

A narrow 500m lane of restaurants and bars between the Kamo River and Kiyamachi. Between May and September the riverside houses set out wooden terraces over the bank for dining in the breeze. Signs along the lane ask visitors to hold off on photos.

The emperors' home until the move to Tokyo, open without booking and free of charge. Bags are checked at Seishomon gate, then a set route leads around the halls. Closed Mondays and over the New Year break.

The great Zen temple of Arashiyama, where Muso Soseki's Sogenchi garden borrows the hills behind it. Leave by the garden's north gate and you step straight onto the bamboo path, one walk covering both.

Stone-stepped slopes lined with souvenir shops and teahouses climb toward Kiyomizu-dera. Folklore says a fall on Sannenzaka means death within 3 years, so a shop at the bottom sells gourd charms against it. For empty lanes, come at sunrise.

The shrine at the east end of Gion that hosts the month-long Gion Matsuri every July, with float processions on July 17 and 24. The grounds never close, so the hundreds of lanterns on the dance stage glow all night for anyone passing.

A shrine to the god of learning whose plum garden of about 1,500 trees blooms from February into March. On the 25th of each month the Tenjin-san market fills the grounds with old textiles and pottery. Stroke a bronze ox's head, they say, and you get cleverer.

Good groundwater drew the brewers here, and white-walled, black-boarded storehouses line the canal. The Gekkeikan Okura museum displays old brewing tools, then pours samples. Through spring, summer and autumn, boats styled on old cargo barges ply the canal.