Chion-in's great bell stays silent on ordinary days

The great bell of Chion-in was cast in 1636. According to the temple's Japanese website, it is 3.3 metres high, about 2.8 metres across and weighs about seventy tons, and the bell tower was built in 1678. It is not rung on ordinary days, only at the Gyoki memorial services for the priest Honen in April and on New Year's Eve, when a team of seventeen, one on the main rope and sixteen on the branch ropes, strikes it 108 times.

Chion-in sits at the foot of the Higashiyama hills, and a short way south is Yasaka Shrine, whose festival is the month-long Gion Matsuri every July. The shrine faces the eastern end of Shijo-dori. In Gion, Hanamikoji runs south from Shijo, a stone-paved street lined with wooden townhouses behind fine lattices, with many teahouses and restaurants behind them.

Kiyomizu-dera sits on the slope of the Higashiyama hills. Below its gate, Kiyomizu-zaka and Sannenzaka drop away in stone paving and steps, lined with old shops selling shichimi pepper, Kiyomizu-yaki pottery and yatsuhashi, and wagashi makers keep seasonal fresh sweets in their glass cases. Inside the temple the Otowa waterfall falls in three thin streams, and visitors queue to catch the water in long-handled cups.

Yudofu is a classic Kyoto lunch: blocks of tofu warmed slowly in kombu broth, brought to the table in the pot and eaten with soy sauce and chopped spring onion. The old restaurants around Nanzen-ji are especially known for it.

Fushimi Inari Taisha is in Fushimi, south of central Kyoto. Its vermilion torii climb the path up Mount Inari, in places so close together that they form a tunnel, and stone foxes and small stacked torii left by worshippers stand beside the steps. The name of each gate's donor and a date are written on the back of the pillar, out of sight on the way up and readable only on the way down.