Most Kyoto guides are temple lists masquerading as travel articles. The temple is the easy part. Hard part: the city is six geographic clusters, not one walkable centre, and the difference between a great Kyoto trip and a forgettable one is which two of those clusters you base around, when you wake up, and which … Read more
JR doesn’t run to Kintetsu-Nara. JR doesn’t run on the Hankyu Arashiyama Line that pulls into the village across the Togetsukyo Bridge. JR doesn’t run the Keihan platforms three minutes from the foot of the Fushimi Inari torii tunnel. And JR’s national pass, the one most first-time Japan visitors buy on autopilot, doesn’t cover the … Read more
Most travellers planning a Kansai-and-Hiroshima trip click straight to the national Japan Rail Pass. They see "unlimited rides for seven days" on the JR Group homepage and assume that's the answer. Then they pay ¥50,000 a head for a route that a ¥23,000 regional pass would have covered, with the same Shinkansen, the same reserved … Read more
