Kyoto audiotours

Kyoto served as Japan's imperial capital from 794 until 1869, when Emperor Meiji moved the court to the newly renamed Tokyo. Those 1,075 years left an architectural density that has no equivalent in Japan: seventeen UNESCO World Heritage Sites, over 1,600 Buddhist temples, more than 400 Shinto shrines, and the intact streetscapes of the Gion district where wooden machiya townhouses still line the lanes as they did when geisha were the primary entertainers of Heian court aristocracy. The city was famously spared from American bombing during World War II, a decision attributed to U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson's pre-war visit and his recognition of its irreplaceable cultural value.

Fushimi Inari Taisha, the mountain shrine to the south of the city, is approached through a corridor of roughly 10,000 vermillion torii gates donated by businesses and individuals since the 8th century.

The path winds up Mount Inari through smaller shrines and fox statues (the fox is the messenger of the rice deity Inari) for about four kilometers to the summit. Most visitors photograph the lower gates and turn back within thirty minutes; walking the full circuit to the two-hour mark thins the crowds dramatically and changes the atmosphere entirely. The Arashiyama bamboo grove in the western hills is similarly best walked at first light before tour groups arrive, when the wind through the bamboo produces a sound that the Japanese government has designated one of the country's 100 soundscapes worth preserving.