Journal / Higashiyama

Higashiyama After Dark

By Kumiko · Kyoto

Higashiyama has more visitors at night than it used to. But next to the daytime, it's still wonderfully empty — and that's exactly why I send people there in the evening.

Walk it under the lights: Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka, the Nene-no-michi path, the Yasaka Pagoda, the lanes of Miyagawa-cho, one of Kyoto's old geisha quarters. By that hour most of the shops have closed — but that isn't the point. Lit by the warm orange of the streetlamps, these lanes hold a stillness and an atmosphere that, honestly, take my breath away.

The Yasaka Pagoda lit gold at night above the wet stone lane of Ninenzaka in Higashiyama, Kyoto — The Yasaka Pagoda above Ninenzaka, lit against the night — most of the shops long closed, the lane almost to yourself.

And here's something I recommend on purpose: go on a rainy night. When the rain wets the paving, the stones catch the light and hold it — a soft sheen running the length of the street. Wet cobblestone, glowing orange, is its own kind of beautiful.

Nene-no-michi at night in the rain, wet stone paving reflecting orange streetlamps in Higashiyama, Kyoto — Nene-no-michi in the rain: wet stone holding the lamplight, and almost no one about.

It's the same historic Kyoto people come to see by day, but wrapped in a silence the daytime never has. That contrast — the crowds gone, the stone glowing — is what I most want you to feel.

If you'd like to walk it after dark with a local, that's the evening my Night Walk & Hidden Izakaya is built around.

Walk Higashiyama after dark?