Issue 40: Kyoto, east of the river
Skip the famous side for a day. The east bank has the temples, the leaves, and nobody in front of them...
Kyoto has a problem, and the problem is that everyone knows about Kyoto. The solution is a river. Cross it.
The morning
Start at the top of the Philosopher's Path at seven, before the shops open, and walk south with the canal. The leaves are the point in November; the silence is the point at seven.
The temples
Choose two. Not six, two. Nanzen-ji for the gate and the aqueduct, which is Victorian and brick and utterly wrong and somehow right. Honen-in for the moss, which has been swept that morning and will be swept again tomorrow.
Lunch
Soba, in a place with four seats and a grandmother. There are a hundred of these and every one is better than the restaurant you booked.
The evening
Kiyomizu at dusk, when it is lit and the maples are lit and the city below is turning its lights on. Yes, there will be people. It is worth it anyway, which is the highest thing I can say about a famous place.
One place, every Thursday
The letter, in your inbox, before it is on the site. Nothing else, ever.
Writes Signal from wherever he was last Thursday. Eleven years, sixty countries, one forty-litre bag.
Signal
A weekly travel letter: one place, one week, one opinion.