Higashiyama

Both are designated Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings, which restricts what owners may do to façades, roofs, signage and even the colour of a vending machine. That is why the district reads as coherent where most of Kyoto is a patchwork of post-war concrete: nothing here can be replaced with something taller or shinier.

Sannenzaka — "three-year slope" — climbs in stone steps between two-storey wooden shops selling pickles, ceramics, incense and yatsuhashi, the cinnamon rice-flour sweet the city is known for. Ninenzaka, "two-year slope", continues it northwards on a gentler gradient. The names are usually explained as the number of years of misfortune that follow a fall on the steps, which is a folk etymology, and the steps are slippery enough in rain to make you take it seriously anyway.

What to notice: the roof tiles with their demon-faced ends, the inuyarai — the curved bamboo screens at street level that keep dogs and cart wheels off the timber — and the fact that almost every building is a working shop with a family living above it.

Ishibei-koji, the lane nobody photographs

Off Nene-no-Michi, a short stone alley curves between plastered walls with no shopfronts at all: Ishibei-koji, built in the early twentieth century as a row of rented houses and now a handful of very expensive ryotei and small inns. It takes four minutes to walk and is often completely empty. It is also private property in feel if not in law, so photograph the lane and not the doorways.

Before 08:30 the shutters are down, delivery vans are working, school children are cutting through, and the lanes are yours. Kiyomizu-dera has been open since 06:00, so the sequence works: temple first, then walk down into a quarter that is still asleep.

From 10:00 to about 16:00 every shop is open, the yatsuhashi samples are out, kimono-rental groups are photographing each other on the steps, and the lanes move at a shuffle. This is the version most visitors see, and it is not the same experience.

After the shops close, between 17:00 and 18:00, the crowd drains within twenty minutes. The lanes are lit, mostly empty, and the walk down to Gion arrives exactly when the lanterns come on there. This is the best hour of the three and almost nobody uses it.

The things actually made here are yatsuhashi, the cinnamon-scented rice-flour sweet sold raw and folded around bean paste or baked hard; Kiyomizu-yaki ceramics, which have been fired on this hillside for centuries and are sold in shops that can tell you which kiln each piece came from; and pickles, sold by houses with their own cellars.

The eating along the lanes runs to standing counters and tea houses rather than restaurants, which suits the walk. For an actual meal, keep going down to Gion and Pontocho, where a table before 18:00 is genuinely available, or across to Nishiki Market earlier in the day. Note that the market's rule about not eating while walking applies here in spirit too — the lanes are narrow, they are somebody's street, and the shops provide places to stand.