Travel Tips

The Most Beautiful City in the World
by Marc P. Keane

"Anyone who lives in Kyoto, or has visited the city even just briefly, knows there are places of great beauty here: the temple gardens, forested shrines, lovely shinise (old shops), machiya (wooden townhouses) and traditional inns. That beauty is very real; real enough for Kyoto to rightly warrant being considered a World Cultural Heritage. But anyone who knows the city also realizes that due to the broad-scale changes that have been made in Kyoto over the past 50 years, those places of beauty are now rare - very rare - and that the breadth and width of the city is actually boringly unattractive or downright ugly. "

"There are some cities around the world which still have an integral culture visible in the form of the city itself; cities that can be walked around and enjoyed on any given street, from any angle: even from a bird's-eye view: and still look wonderful, but Kyoto is not one of them. Seen from any of the nearby mountains, such as when you look down from the open swath on the top of Mount Daimonji, the city looks like a jumble of concrete boxes. Not the best of the old: not the best of the new. Just a plain, boring, late-twentieth century city."

This is this view that greets all visitors as they arrive at Kyoto Station. This is the intersection in front of the station. Hopefully you will be swiftly taken away to your pricey Japanese-inn somewhere on Higashiyama (the East mountain of Kyoto)!? If you are staying elsewhere, especially in the center, there is where you are heading - Kyoto city as seen in the picture.

What does Kyoto really look like?

On average, as an entire city?