Your first trip, the Tokyo side or the Kyoto side?

There's no wrong answer — the honest trade between modern Tokyo and the old capital, and how to do both without rushing.

Last verified: 2026-06-23

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Most first-timers quietly end up doing both — so the real question is usually which one first.

If your planning has stalled on Tokyo or Kyoto, let me lift that worry off you first. These are two sides of one country — two temperaments, really — and travellers fall hard for both. The choice isn't modern or old on a checklist; it's which feeling of Japan you'd like to step into first.

The modern Tokyo side — the Nishi-Shinjuku skyscraper skyline with Mount Fuji rising behind it

The Tokyo sideKanto

Neon nights
Back-alley ramen
Hakone onsen
Kamakura
Nikko
Unshowy welcome

Japan reinventing itself in real time — glass towers above ramen counters, neon over quiet shrines, a city so deep you could never see all of it. Around it sit the days out: the hot-spring valleys of Hakone, the temple-calm of Kamakura, the cedar shrines of Nikko. The welcome here is real but unshowy.

Honest note. Jet-lagged on day one, Tokyo can feel like a great deal at once. The move the regulars make is simply to slow down — one neighbourhood at a time.

Your Kanto week →

The old-capital Kyoto side — Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, mirrored in its pond on a clear day

The Kyoto sideKansai

Temple gardens
Wooden lanes
Nara deer
Himeji castle
Osaka warmth
Quiet welcome

The older heart — the imperial capital for more than a thousand years, of wooden lanes, temple gardens and a slower, more deliberate beauty. It comes with Nara and its bowing deer, Himeji and its white castle, and Osaka, the region's kitchen and its most openly warm city. Kyoto's own welcome runs quieter.

Honest note. By mid-morning the famous temples fill with tour coaches, and 'temple fatigue' is real. The cure the locals keep is the early start — the lane that's a crush at noon is yours alone at opening.

Your Kansai week →

If you do both

Tokyo

2–3 days

~2h15

Kyoto

~4 days

Tokyo first, then west on the Shinkansen. Fly into one airport and home from the other — no doubling back. A single week holds both sides if you keep to two bases; ten days lets the whole thing breathe.