How should I spend 48 hours in Kyoto without the clichés?
Give one morning to the north-west hills before eight, one afternoon to a single museum or craft workshop, and both evenings to the small streets east of the river — and see no more than three named sights in total.
Kyoto punishes itinerary greed. The city's pleasures are textural — light on a moss garden, the sound of a wooden shutter, a counter with eight seats — and they evaporate in a crowd of two hundred.
The clichés are not wrong, they are mistimed. Fushimi Inari at seven in the morning is one of the great walks in Japan; at noon it is a queue.
The edit
Day one, 6:30am: the northern Higashiyama path on foot
From Nanzen-ji up through the aqueduct and along the canal. You will have it almost alone, and it sets the temperature for everything after.
A single temple, chosen for the garden, visited slowly
Ryōan-ji or Hōnen-in rather than the checklist. Sit for forty minutes. The whole point is the sitting.
One afternoon in the craft city, not the tourist city
A knife maker in Nishiki, an indigo dyer, the Kawai Kanjirō House. Kyoto is a working craft capital, and this is the part travellers miss.
Dinner at a counter, booked before you fly
Eight seats, one chef, a set menu. Reserve six to eight weeks out through your hotel — this is the single highest-return booking of the trip.
A late walk in Gion or Pontochō after nine
The daytime crowds are gone, the lanterns are on, and the neighbourhood returns to itself.
The skip
Skip the bamboo grove at Arashiyama between nine and five, skip the kimono rental photoshoot, and skip any day that tries to combine the north-west and the south-east.
Stay east of the river or in the quiet north. Sleeping ten minutes from the station saves twenty minutes a day and costs you the thing you came for.