Kurama and Kibune

The temple was founded in 770 and sits on a wooded slope above the village. Its own literature explains the two payments in a way no other Kyoto temple does: the mountain fee — aizanhi, literally "mountain-love fee", $3.13 (¥500) since 1 April 2023 — goes towards cleaning the mountain, nurturing the forest and maintaining the pilgrim path, and the temple states that it deliberately leaves the path unpaved and fallen trees where they lie, so as not to interrupt the cycle it exists to protect.

The cable car is stranger still. The temple says it was laid so that elderly people and those with weak legs could reach the halls more easily, that it is not a profit-making business, and that rather than charging a fare it lets those who have contributed to the upkeep of the mountain's halls use it as a thank-you. The contribution is $1.25 (¥200) for adults and $0.63 (¥100) for children, one way. It runs from 08:40 up to 16:25 down and is suspended on periodic inspection days.

Kurama is also the home of Kurama-kokyo, an independent religious school that reads the temple's central deity as a cosmic life-force, and of the tengu — the long-nosed mountain spirits said to have taught swordsmanship to Minamoto no Yoshitsune when he trained here as a boy. There is a very large tengu head outside the station and nobody in the village finds it odd.

The path runs from behind the temple's main hall over the ridge and down the far side into Kibune. It is stone steps, packed earth and — in one famous stretch — a slope where cedar roots have been exposed into a lattice across the trail, said to be where Yoshitsune trained. Nothing about it is exposed or dangerous; it is simply a real footpath in a forest.

Trainers are fine in dry weather; after rain the descent is slippery enough to want a hand free. Doing it in the other direction — Kibune up, Kurama down — is equally common and slightly harder work. Either way the mountain fee is paid at whichever end you start.

Kifune Shrine has stood at the head of the valley for well over a millennium and is dedicated to the deity of water — it is the shrine Kyoto's brewers, dyers and restaurateurs come to. Its approach, a flight of stone steps under vermilion lanterns, is one of the most photographed staircases in Japan, particularly under snow. Its fortunes are written in water: you draw a blank slip, float it in the sacred spring, and the characters appear.

From roughly May to September the restaurants along the street build kawadoko — platforms out over the river, a few centimetres above the water — and serve lunch and dinner on them. The stream runs cold enough to drop the air temperature noticeably, which in a Kyoto August is the entire point. Prices are set-menu and not cheap; reservations are made directly with each restaurant and are essential at weekends.

In 2026 the district also runs temporary traffic restrictions in the peak weeks, posted by the shrine — check its site before driving, which you should not be doing anyway.

The Eizan Railway runs from Demachiyanagi, in the north of the city, to Kurama in about thirty minutes on a two-carriage mountain line; some services use observation carriages with seats turned to face the windows, which through the maple tunnel in November is worth timing for. Kibuneguchi is the stop before Kurama.

Demachiyanagi is on the Keihan line from Gion-Shijo, about ten minutes. Total door to door from central Kyoto: about an hour.

Neither city day pass covers any of this. Kyoto City's own transport page states that Kurama and Kibune lie outside the flat-fare bus zone and are not served by the pass, and the Eizan Railway is a private line outside both passes entirely. Budget the fares separately — how the passes actually work.

This is not a first-visit stop. It is what you do on a fourth day, on a second trip, or on the afternoon when the heat in the basin has become unreasonable and the temples are all full — which in August is most afternoons. Leave Demachiyanagi at nine, walk the ridge before noon, eat in Kibune, and be back in the city by four.

In November it deserves better than that: the colour on this line peaks a fortnight before the city's and the observation carriages run through a lit maple tunnel. The best-time page sets out the timing.