Kyoto in Seven Days,
Vegetarian.

The desk does not fill the first day. The traveller has flown; the body is on a different clock; the city is unfamiliar. We anchor only the hotel and a single short walk that ends with a meal the traveller does not have to think about.

From the hotel, walk Hanamikōji from its southern end at dusk — the lanterns are lit by 17:30 in May. Cross Shijō and drop into Pontochō for a casual evening. The desk's standing rule is one verb per hour on arrival night; eat, walk, sleep.

Kiyomizu-dera's gates open at 06:00. The temple is at its best in the first hour after that, when the wooden veranda is empty and the city below is still in mist. Walk down through Sannenzaka and Ninenzaka — both lanes empty until eight — and end the morning at Kōdai-ji.

For lunch, ride the bus north to Daitoku-ji. Izusen Daiji-in serves shōjin ryōri in stacked red lacquerware bowls; the meal is brought out as a small ceremony. Afternoon: Yasaka Shrine, the lower Higashiyama lanes, the bell tower if the hour falls right. Dinner is booked at Ajiro Honten, in the lane behind Myōshin-ji — Michelin shōjin, ten courses, vegan.

Kinkaku-ji opens at 09:00. Go at opening; the pavilion is best seen from across the pond in flat morning light. Twenty minutes' walk south is Ryōan-ji, where the rock garden's fifteen stones are arranged so that any vantage point reveals only fourteen. Sit there for half an hour. The day's discipline is to do less.

Lunch is a casual vegetable set near Myōshin-ji; the temple itself is quiet on a Wednesday. The evening is unscheduled — the desk leaves it for a kissaten, a long bath, or a walk along the Kamogawa river.

Take the JR Sagano line to Saga-Arashiyama (sixteen minutes from Kyoto Station). Walk first to Tenryū-ji — the garden, designed in 1339 by Musō Soseki, is the oldest in Japan to survive in its original form. From the garden's eastern path, exit into the bamboo grove. Go before ten; after ten the lane is impassable.

Lunch is the standing event of the day: Shigetsu, inside the Tenryū-ji compound, serves fully vegan shōjin ryōri in a tatami room overlooking the Sōgenchi garden. Three set menus; the middle one is the desk's recommendation. Book a month ahead. Afternoon: the Ōkōchi Sansō villa, the Saga Tōrokko scenic railway, or the back river path to Senkō-ji.

The gates of Fushimi Inari are open at every hour, but the shrine is only itself before seven. Take the JR Nara line to Inari (five minutes) for a 06:00 arrival. Climb the senbon torii — the closely-spaced vermilion gates — to the Yotsutsuji intersection halfway up. Beyond that point the tunnel thins and the city reappears.

Descend by nine. Two stops north on the JR Nara line is Tōfuku-ji, best known for the Tsūten-kyō covered bridge and the modernist Hōjō rock gardens by Shigemori Mirei. Lunch at Daitokuji Ikkyū — the oldest shōjin ryōri restaurant in Kyoto, in operation since the fifteenth century. For dinner, the desk books Kanga-an for Fucha Ryōri — a Chinese-influenced Buddhist register the city quietly preserves.

Morning at Nishiki Market. A vegetarian's walk through Nishiki is shorter than most travellers expect — many stalls are fish-derived — but the yuba (tofu skin), the seasonal pickles, the matcha confectioners, and the soy-based street snacks are real and worth queueing for. The desk's recommendation is to enter from the east at Teramachi and leave from the west; one pass, not three.

Afternoon: the Eizan line to Kurama (thirty minutes from Demachiyanagi). Lunch at Yoshuji, a country-house kitchen on the path to Kurama-dera. Walk the trail from Kurama-dera to Kibune — about ninety minutes downhill through old cedar — and take the train back.

A short morning. A single temple garden, chosen the night before. If the desk had to choose, it would be Shōren-in for its camphor trees, or Ginkaku-ji's sand cone before the path fills. A final coffee. The luggage forwarder, if needed, can collect from the hotel before noon and deliver to Kansai for the next morning.

For the traveller who wants a closing celebratory meal, the desk's note is Kōdaiji Jugyū-an — a 110-year-old sukiya-style building in Higashiyama with a landscaped garden, two Michelin stars, and a kaiseki arrangement that can be made fully vegetarian with two weeks' notice.