The quiet side of Kyoto

Arrive before the shutters. That is the whole method. The famous gates have their hours of weather and their hours of queues; the quiet side of Kyoto is simply the city used by the people who live there.

West of the river

We walk Arashiyama only in the first light, then leave it. The day belongs to a smaller shrine, a tofu breakfast, a textile workshop that does not advertise in English. The traveller who wants Japan to feel like a country — not a set — has to accept missing a photograph.

What we leave out

The night illumination. The checklist. The transfer that treats the city as a corridor between stations. What remains is slower, and it is the Kyoto people describe when they stop performing it.