The short answer
Almost everything in this guide is walk-in. Temples, shrines, gardens, markets and streets need nothing arranged. ⭐ What needs arranging is the bed, a small number of reservation-only gardens, and dinner if you care about it.
⭐ The reservation-only properties
A handful of the very best places in Kyoto cannot simply be visited. The imperial villas administered by the Imperial Household Agency — Katsura Rikyu, Shugakuin and the Sento palace — admit visitors by advance application only, in guided groups.
Saiho-ji, the moss temple, is the other one: admission is by application made in advance, and visitors take part in a period of sutra copying before being let into the garden.
⚠️ Arrangements, quotas and the application method for all of these change. Apply through the administering body itself and take its instructions over anything written here.
The special openings
Many of the finest interiors and sub-temple gardens open only during tokubetsu kokai — special openings of a few weeks in spring and autumn. Which buildings take part changes every year and the list is published shortly beforehand.
⭐ This is the single most useful thing to check before a trip, because it decides whether half the city's best rooms are available to you at all. See when to come.
Where to stay
⚠️ In the cherry and autumn weeks Kyoto genuinely runs out of rooms, and it does so months ahead. If your dates are in early April or late November, the accommodation is the first thing to fix and everything else can wait.
Outside those windows the city has plenty of beds and you can be much more relaxed about it.
Dinner
⚠️ Kyoto's better restaurants are small, and a good number take reservations only through an introduction or a hotel concierge, and none at all from a first-time visitor off the street. That is not hostility — it is a system built on knowing who is coming.
There is a great deal of excellent food that works nothing like that; see eating and drinking.
Worth arranging before you arrive
Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you book through one we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It does not affect what is recommended here, and no sight page on this site carries one.
A data plan is the one to sort before you land. Kyoto has no airport of its own, and the bus routes and temple maps you want on the way in all live on your phone.
