Kyoto

Kyoto is a city in the Kansai region of Japan, the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, in a basin ringed by wooded hills. For more than a thousand years it was the imperial capital of Japan, and it keeps many of the temples, shrines and gardens of that time.

Emperor Kanmu moved his court to the site in 794 and laid out the city of Heian-kyō on a grid modeled on the Chinese capital Chang'an. The emperors lived in Kyoto until the Meiji Restoration, when the court moved to Tokyo in the 1860s. Zen temples, tea houses and dry rock gardens were built in the city under the Ashikaga shoguns, and Kyoto became the home of the tea ceremony, noh theater and the weaving of fine silk. The historic monuments of the old city were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1994.

Nintendo, which began in Kyoto as a maker of hanafuda playing cards, has its head office in the city and designs the Switch console and the Mario games. Kyocera, founded in Kyoto, makes ceramic parts, printers and solar cells. Shimadzu, also based in the city, makes analytical instruments and medical imaging equipment.

Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, is a temple hall covered in gold leaf that is reflected in a pond. Kiyomizu-dera stands on a wooden stage built out over a hillside without nails. Fushimi Inari Taisha has thousands of orange torii gates that form tunnels up the slopes of a sacred mountain. Gion, the old entertainment district, keeps wooden teahouses where geiko and maiko perform. Kyoto University has produced several Nobel Prize winners in physics and chemistry.