Kyoto for The Romantics: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

Walk the canal from Ginkaku-ji south as the lanterns come on, the cherry trees bare or heavy depending on the month, the water always slow.

A thatched gate and two raked sand mounds under maples, the quietest temple approach in the city; the inner grounds close early, so come for the path and the moss.

Thick udon in a dark wooden house with a dish of seasonal vegetables and sesame to add as you please.

The retreat the poet Ishikawa Jōzan built in 1641, with portraits of thirty-six Chinese poets and a deer-scarer knocking in the garden.

Twelve hundred rakan statues carved by amateurs in the 1980s, now mossed over and grinning, laughing, drinking, at the top of the Arashiyama road.

A kaiseki counter facing a sliver of garden; the chef serves pike conger in summer and matsutake in autumn without a word of explanation.

The Suirokaku brick arches of 1888 still carry Lake Biwa water through the temple grounds; walk on top of them toward Keage.

Willows, stone bridges, and the Tatsumi shrine where geiko pray; the quietest hour is just before the teahouse lamps are lit.

Take a counter at a yakitori house on the alley, a single lamp above each door, then walk home along the Kamo with the river sliding past.

Ride the little train north and climb through cedars to the temple where Ushiwakamaru trained; by late morning the mist has lifted off the valley.

Stand under the thousand-year cedar at Yuki shrine and look at the gatehouse where the October fire festival torches are kept.

Mountain-vegetable shōjin lunch on tatami by a sunken hearth, with the valley outside the window, before the train back down.