There is something Kyoto does to you that is difficult to prepare for and impossible to fully explain afterwards. We arrived from Tokyo, which had been loud and beautiful and relentless in the best possible way, and within what felt like the first hour, something shifted. The pace dropped. The streets narrowed. The air got thick with heat, incense and something harder to name, and we found ourselves speaking less and looking around a lot more.

Kyoto turns you introspective without asking permission. It makes you want to be quiet, to pay attention, to notice the things you would normally walk straight past. The 36 degree heat and 90 % humidity only amplified that. When everything is that sensorial, when the air is this heavy and the stone is warm and the smell from a shop that has been there for centuries drifts past you on the street, you stop being able to be anywhere other than exactly where you are. The present becomes impossible to ignore, which sounds corny and also happens to be the truest thing I can say about the place. Kyoto strips you back slowly and gently and spits you out a slightly more true and toned down version of yourself, and the whole thing happens so gradually that you only really notice it once you are already on the train home.

We ate, we drank, we shopped, we pondered, and we tried our best not to melt. Here is how we spent 72 hours in Kyoto.

Where to stay

We had the chance to call Ace Hotel Kyoto home and would return in a heartbeat. The comfiest beds, a record player in every room and a very well equipped record library downstairs for when you feel like switching up the soundtrack.

Perfectly located for exploring the city, but the cherry on top? You can borrow a bike from reception. Get one in the morning and explore Kyoto the way it deserves to be explored.

Day One

Start with breakfast at Ace. You name it, they’ve got it. Whether you are in the mood for a Japanese breakfast or the more Western classics, they nail it. My recommendation: the American breakfast, an OJ and the day can only really go well from there.

Then grab a bike from reception and head out. Spend the morning cycling through the city, stopping whenever something catches your eye. Pop into Kyukyodo for stationery, get distracted by ceramic shops and generally allow yourself to move without too much of a plan.

Eventually make your way towards Gion for lunch at Hikiniku to Come. We wanted to be sceptical (the place had popped up on my FYP one too many times). We really did. We stepped inside thinking, it cannot possibly be that good?!

And damned were we.

The juiciest meat grilled right in front of you, served with perfectly cooked rice.

The cherry on top? 6 tableside condiments and pickled cabbage at free disposition. Heaven is a place on earth. 

After lunch, wander through Gion and make your way towards the river for Flow by Nozy Coffee. Get the drip coffee and donut, find yourself a seat outside and enjoy the view.

Keep wandering afterwards. Get lost in records, cross the river, look at things you do not need and slowly make your way back to the hotel for a shower, bath, lie down, record session or all of the above.

For dinner, pizza at Casa di Ciro. Half a litre of cold white wine on the table and pizza good enough to make us ask a question that might ruffle some feathers: better than Italy?!

Finish the night at Bar Eureka, which we discovered entirely by coincidence after dinner. One impeccable kumquat Earl Grey cocktail later and suddenly we were very happy about taking the wrong turn.

Day Two

Day Two calls for a gloomy morning at Momoharu, although sunshine is also permitted.

This might have been one of my favourite mornings of the entire trip. A tiny wood lined room run by two lovely women, whispering encouraged, three things on the menu and everything exactly as it should be.

Get the egg sando with an ice cold grape juice, take the dreamy window seat if you can and read for a while. 

From there, head to Murin An Garden. Go early enough that it still feels quiet and spend the morning walking around, sitting, looking and pondering. Don’t make the same mistake as I did and start journaling. Putting pen to paper is strictly forbidden.

Once you have pondered sufficiently, lunch is at Kyoudon Kisoba Okakita. When the taxi driver on the way tells you it is his go to lunch spot, you listen.

Some of the best tempura of the entire trip. By bite two we were hearing sweet symphonies.

The afternoon is for spending all your money.

Start at Arch for three floors of vintage, pop into Stactile,  then make your way through Kindal, RAGTAG, Brand Off and the other usual suspects (digging is rewarded). Find the little tea shop tucked into a residential street (we might have to gatekeep this one), ask the owner approximately one million questions and leave with excellent matcha and enough loose leaf hojicha to last several lifetimes.

Then back to ACE for dinner at Kōsa. Perfectly cooked wagyu across multiple courses, each somehow better than the last without the entire thing ever becoming too meat heavy. Pro tip: ask the staff for a drink pairing. They know what they are talking about.

And then, Kazubar.

The treasure that this place was is almost difficult to put into words. You stumble up to the second floor and make your way into a fully candlelit bar. A menu is nowhere to be found and you feel like you have just entered the void. Somehow the perfect song appears to be playing at all times and before you know it, hours have passed and you feel ferociously alive.

The thing about Kyoto

Alone in Kyoto by Air started making sense to me shortly after I stepped off the train.

The song has always had this quality that is difficult to name. A melancholy that is not exactly sad, a slowness that is not exactly still. It feels like remembering something you cannot quite place, like standing at the edge of a feeling and not being sure whether you are coming or going. For years I had listened to it and understood it as a mood. In Kyoto, I understood it as a place.

Because that is what Kyoto does. It makes you melancholic in the most unexpected and welcome way. You find yourself thinking about the past and the future simultaneously, about people you love and things you have not done yet and moments you want to hold onto before they slip. And then, somehow, in the middle of all of that, you land fully in the present. On a bed of clouds that is actually a very good mattress, window seat at a tiny café, a bench in a garden where looking is encouraged and everything else can wait.

We only had 48 hours. It felt like a blink and a lifetime simultaneously, and I think that is just Kyoto doing what it does. It takes whatever time you give it and makes you feel everything at once.

I will be back.