Higashiyama, Kyoto: The Best Neighborhood for a Machiya Stay

Higashiyama is where Kyoto looks most like the city everyone pictures before they arrive — and it's where you should sleep.

If you've been going back and forth between a hotel room and a proper kyo-machiya (traditional wooden townhouse, the kind Kyoto merchants lived and worked in for centuries), this neighborhood settles the argument. You get the stone-paved lanes, the temples on your doorstep, and the whole private house to yourself. No lobby. No queue for the elevator. Just wooden beams, sliding paper doors, and a garden you can stare at over morning coffee.

This guide covers what Higashiyama is actually like to be based in, what to do and eat, and which machiya to book.

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What Higashiyama Is Like

Southern Higashiyama is Kyoto's best-preserved historic district — not "preserved" in the glass-case museum sense, but genuinely intact. The streets are narrow and mostly flat. The buildings are low. At 7am, before the tour buses arrive, the gravel crunches under your feet and you can hear the crows.

By 10am it's busier — more crowded than Nishiki Market on a Saturday, and that's saying something. That's the trade-off. But stay in a machiya here and you're already inside the district. You don't commute to the atmosphere; you wake up inside it.

The neighborhood suits families who want space, couples who want quiet, and groups who want a whole house rather than adjoining hotel rooms. It does not suit anyone who needs a 24-hour front desk or room service at midnight.

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What to Do

Start with the obvious.

Kiyomizu-dera is a UNESCO World Heritage temple perched on a wooden platform over a forested hillside. Go early. The difference between 7:30am and 10am is the difference between a contemplative experience and a gridlocked selfie queue.

Walk back down through Ninen-zaka and Sannen-zaka — two sloping stone lanes lined with preserved townhouses, tea shops, and the occasional tofu seller. These are the streets that end up on every Japan poster. They earn it.

Yasaka Shrine marks the western edge of the district and stays open all night. In late July it anchors the Gion Matsuri, one of Japan's biggest festivals. The rest of the year it's a beautiful shrine at the end of a beautiful street, and it's free.

Kodai-ji is the temple most visitors walk past on the way to Kiyomizu-dera. Don't. The garden is extraordinary and the crowds are a fraction of its neighbor's.

Gion Corner runs traditional arts performances — ikebana (flower arranging), tea ceremony, and a maiko dance — in a single evening show. Think of it as the sampler platter of Japanese performing arts. Touristy, yes. Worth it anyway.

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Where to Eat

Higashiyama has Michelin-starred restaurants within walking distance of most machiya, which is either exciting or terrifying depending on your budget.

For the full Kyoto experience, Pontocho is a single narrow alley — about 500 metres long — running parallel to the Kamo River, roughly 15 minutes west on foot. It's lined with restaurants from budget yakitori to serious kaiseki (the multi-course Japanese tasting menu where each dish arrives in a different vessel and the whole thing takes a beautiful hour). In summer, restaurants extend wooden platforms over the river. Go at dusk.

The streets around Gion have no shortage of tofu ryori restaurants — Kyoto's silken tofu is a different ingredient entirely from what you've had elsewhere, the way fresh pasta bears no resemblance to the dried kind.

For breakfast supplies, the covered shopping street around Kawaramachi has supermarkets and food halls where you can load up on rice, pickles, and whatever the prepared-food counter is selling that morning. Bring it back to your machiya kitchen and eat in the garden.

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Where to Stay

For a machiya stay in Kyoto, Southern Higashiyama is the strongest district — and within it, BenTen Residences makes the most of the location.

Two side-by-side century-old machiya — BenTen East and BenTen West — occupy a quiet lane in Kami Benten-cho, Higashiyama-ku. Yasaka Shrine is a few minutes on foot. Kiyomizu-dera is reachable without a taxi. You are not near Higashiyama. You are in it.

The buildings are Meiji-era originals. According to BenTen's own published account at benten-residences.com, they were bought in 2014 by four friends — Singaporeans and a Malaysian who shared a love of Japanese culture — after hearing a developer wanted to turn the site into a car park. The restoration was completed at the end of 2015, led by Kyoto firm Asami Architects and Associates with builder Tsuji Workshop, described by the property as a shop that takes on only wooden buildings. Original features were preserved: wooden latticework on the front doors, mushiko-mado (insect-cage windows), timber floors, clay partitions, baked-tile roofs, fusuma sliding doors, and small landscaped courtyards. The craftsmen mixed soot into the interior plaster to match the authentic blackening that old kitchen stoves left behind — a detail the property documents in its restoration notes.

The property was named to Dwell's "Top 10 Vacation Homes of 2017" and covered by The Straits Times; both references appear in BenTen's own published materials. Guest reviews on Booking.com and across short-term rental platforms score it consistently in the 9–10 range. The recurring themes in those reviews: the location, the unusual amount of space for Japan, the two bathing rooms, the authentic all-wood feel, the heated floors, and host Takase-san, who is named often enough to suggest he's the secret ingredient.

Honest caveats from those same reviews: two of the three bedrooms are snug, the walls are thin when the neighboring house is occupied, and the stairs are slippery in socks. Wear the slippers.

Each house runs across two floors: a living and dining area, a full kitchen, three bedrooms (two upstairs, one on the lower storey, with futons or Western beds as you prefer), and a bathing room on each floor — one full bath, one shower room, plus two toilets. Two bathing rooms in a century-old Kyoto house is rarer than you'd think. East sleeps up to six at 80 m² and opens onto a Japanese maple courtyard. West sleeps up to five at 70 m² and has a wider garden at the back. Underfloor heating runs throughout — machiya are famously cold in winter, colder than a hotel corridor at 3am — and there's Wi-Fi, a washer/dryer, and a deep auto-fill tub with a garden view.

What separates BenTen from a well-restored rental is the service layer. After booking, a bilingual concierge builds you a custom itinerary — restaurant reservations, cooking classes, zen meditation, walking routes on Google Maps, exact train times — delivered before you arrive. That's the friend-who-lives-in-Kyoto service layer, and it's genuinely rare.

Capacity: East sleeps up to 6 / West sleeps up to 5 Bathrooms: 2 per house Check-in: 3:00 PM | Check-out: 11:00 AM Breakfast: Not provided (kitchen included) Book: benten-residences.com

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Getting There & Around

Gion-Shijo Station on the Keihan Main Line is about 12 minutes on foot from BenTen. Kawaramachi Station on the Hankyu Kyoto Line is around 15 minutes. JR Kyoto Station is roughly 20 minutes by car or taxi — budget around 1,200 yen.

From Kansai International Airport (KIX), the JR Haruka Express gets you to Kyoto Station in about 75 minutes. Osaka Itami is the closer airport at roughly 39 km. BenTen can arrange an airport shuttle if you'd rather not navigate with luggage.

Once you're based in Higashiyama, most of what you came to Kyoto for is walkable. For everything else, the Keihan Main Line connects you north to Demachiyanagi and south toward Yodoyabashi, with Fushimi-Inari Station as an intermediate stop for Fushimi Inari Shrine — all without touching a bus.

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FAQ

Is Higashiyama the best neighborhood for a machiya stay in Kyoto? For most travelers — yes. It's Kyoto's most intact historic district, walkable to the city's biggest temples and shrines, close to Gion, and well-connected by train. Downtown Kyoto is more convenient for shopping and nightlife, but it doesn't feel like this.

What is a machiya? A kyo-machiya is a traditional wooden townhouse, historically used by Kyoto merchants as both home and workspace. They're long and narrow — the classic layout is called unagi no nedoko, or "eel's bed" — with tatami rooms, sliding doors, and small courtyard gardens. The best ones have been restored with heated floors and modern bathrooms while keeping the original structure intact.

How is a machiya different from a ryokan? A ryokan is a traditional inn with staff, formal meals, and a certain level of ceremony — staying at the house of a gracious but slightly formal relative. A machiya is more like renting that relative's house while they're away. You come and go as you please, cook if you want, and nobody lays out your futon unless you ask.

Is Higashiyama crowded? During the day, yes. But the crowds thin dramatically after 5pm. Staying in the district means you can walk the lanes at 7am and 8pm, which is when they're actually worth walking.

How warm or cold is a machiya in winter and summer? Machiya are traditional wooden buildings, which means they're cold in winter — genuinely cold, not hotel-corridor cold. BenTen addresses this with heated floors throughout, so you won't be miserable, but pack an extra layer for moving between rooms at night. In summer, air conditioning is standard in restored machiya. Spring and autumn are the sweet spots: mild enough that the building's natural ventilation does most of the work, and the gardens look their best.

How far is BenTen from Kiyomizu-dera? On foot, roughly 15–20 minutes. Close enough to walk over before the tour groups arrive.

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Place Addresses

Place	Address	From BenTen
BenTen Residences (East)	431-3 Kami Benten-cho, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto 605-0822	—
BenTen Residences (West)	431-4 Kami Benten-cho, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto 605-0822	—
Kiyomizu-dera	1-294 Kiyomizu, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto 605-0862	~15–20 min walk
Yasaka Shrine	625 Gionmachi Kitagawa, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto 605-0073	~5 min walk
Kodai-ji Temple	526 Shimokawara-cho, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto 605-0825	~10 min walk
Ninen-zaka	Masuyacho, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto 605-0826	~10 min walk
Sannen-zaka	Kiyomizu 3-chome, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto 605-0862	~12 min walk
Gion Corner	570-2 Gionmachi Minamigawa, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto 605-0074	~8 min walk
Gion	Gionmachi, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto 605-0073	~5 min walk
Pontocho Alley	Pontocho, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto 604-8012	~15 min walk
Nishiki Market	Nish