Kyoto 2026: The City You Understand Through Food Before Temples

Kyoto guide 2026: Nishiki Market, Fushimi Inari at dawn, kaiseki and the Gion district. Everything you need to know before visiting Japan.

Kyoto is not Tokyo. This is the first important thing to understand before you arrive. Tokyo is speed, density, constant contradiction between the ultra-modern and the traditional that resolves itself noisily. Kyoto is something else: a city where the past doesn't coexist with the present but organises it.

I arrived with a list of restaurants, as always. I left with the conviction that kaiseki is the most sophisticated way of eating that exists in the world, and with the secondary conviction that I would never have understood it if I hadn't started with Nishiki Market.

Nishiki Market is my answer to anyone who asks what to see first in Kyoto. Four covered blocks, three hundred shops, and at every wall or counter something you haven't tried and will need to try before leaving. The tsukemono — Japanese pickles of aubergine, cucumber, daikon — in tones ranging from deep purple to bright yellow. Fried tofu skewers. Wagashi, traditional Japanese sweets made from azuki bean paste that look like small edible artworks. — guides who explain what you're eating, when it's made and why it works this way are worth it. I did the self-taught version pointing at random things and 90% worked, but understanding the context adds a layer that's priceless.

Kaiseki is the other reason Kyoto is a gastronomic city without equal. A kaiseki dinner — eight or ten small courses, each with seasonal ingredients, almost architectural presentation and a flavour logic that only makes complete sense when the last course arrives — is expensive. Very expensive by Spanish set-menu standards. But it's also the most complete culinary experience I've had anywhere in the world, including Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe. . At least two days' notice — the best restaurants close when they're full, not when more customers arrive.

Fushimi Inari deserves a full morning and a strategy. The ten thousand orange torii forming the path up Mount Inari are one of the most photographed images in Japan, for good reason: the tunnel perspective created by consecutive torii gates is a beauty that no photograph fully reproduces. Tourist crowds at the shrine base from 9am don't help. The solution: arrive at 7 or 7:30am. The shrine is open 24 hours. , or go independently — the path is perfectly signposted and climbs for two hours to the summit with panoramic views over the city.

Arashiyama has the bamboo grove and Tenryu-ji temple with its Zen garden over the pond, one of the few gardens where the composition is so correct that you understand why someone dedicated their life to moving stones. It also has the best tofu in the city. . The tofu at specialist restaurants in this area — served in clear dashi broth, fried as agedashi, or cold with ginger and bonito — bears little resemblance to the block tofu from European supermarkets. It's a different ingredient.

Gion at dusk, between 5pm and 7pm, is when you're most likely to see a geiko or maiko walking to their first evening engagement. They're not actors or a tourist attraction: they work in Japan's oldest formal entertainment industry. The correct etiquette: you can look, you cannot touch them or ask for photos directly.

For connectivity in Japan, works from landing — 4G/5G coverage in Japan is exceptional. An important note: Japan remains largely a cash society. Temples, street markets and the best kaiseki restaurants don't accept cards. Always carry yen in cash — 7-Eleven and Lawson ATMs accept international cards without problems. — a traditional ryokan with onsen and kaiseki dinner included is the correct way to understand this city from the inside.