Kyoto again

Everything I have sent you to in Kyoto so far has been a temple or a garden. Nara is a different thing: a whole city that was the capital before Kyoto, with deer wandering through the middle of it.

Two ways to get there from Kyoto Station.

If you have the JR Pass, take JR. If you do not, take Kintetsu, because the walk from JR Nara station to the park is about twenty minutes you did not plan for.

Leave time at the station. You buy the ticket there, the machines get busy, and missing the rapid means waiting half an hour for the next one.

You are among the deer within minutes of arriving, which is exactly as good as it sounds for about ten minutes. Then you buy a packet of shika senbei, the deer crackers sold at stalls in the park, and you learn something. They are not gentle. They will headbutt you, follow you, and pull at your bag. Hold the crackers behind your back and hand them out one at a time, or feed them all at once and walk away with your hands visibly empty.

From the park, Todai-ji is the one thing not to skip. The Great Buddha Hall is one of the largest wooden buildings in the world and the bronze Buddha inside is about 15 metres tall. Then walk up the steps behind it to Nigatsu-do, which is free, usually empty, and has a wooden balcony looking back over the whole valley. That view is the Nara photo nobody has.

Back in Kyoto in the late afternoon, spend the evening in Gion, the geisha district. Walk Hanamikoji and along the Shirakawa canal as the lanterns come on. If you see a geiko or maiko moving between appointments, she is going to work and she is late. Do not block her and do not chase her.

Last morning. There is one thing to do and it only works early.

Go to the Yasaka Pagoda, the five storey pagoda of Hokan-ji, in the Higashiyama district. The pagoda is the landmark, but the reason to come is the street it stands on, Yasaka-dori, running downhill with the pagoda framed at the end of it, and the stone lanes of Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka just above.

Be there by seven. By nine it is one of the most photographed and most crowded streets in Japan. At seven it is empty, the light comes in low along the paving, the shutters are still down, and it is the Kyoto people imagine before they arrive. This is your last morning, so make it the one you remember.

If you have more time, keep walking uphill to Kiyomizu-dera, which opens at six.

Then the airport. From Kyoto Station the Haruka limited express reaches Kansai Airport in about 75 to 80 minutes, running every 30 minutes at peak and hourly in the middle of the day. It is covered by the Japan Rail Pass. Without the pass, reckon on a little under ¥3,000 including the reserved seat. The alternative is the limousine bus from the Hachijo-guchi exit on the south side of the station, slower but easier with a suitcase.

Give yourself more margin than you think. Kansai has a real immigration and security queue, and the Haruka runs every hour off peak, not every ten minutes.