Planning a Kyoto Night Out: Hours, Costs and Getting Home
Kyoto's evening is short, free and almost entirely outdoors. The Kyoto Night ticket prices listed here all start between five and half past six, and what decides whether that is a night walk or an afternoon one is the time of year.
When it actually gets dark in Kyoto
Sunset moves two and a half hours across the year: 16:45 in the first ten days of December, 19:15 at the start of July. That single fact reorganises an evening. A 5:30pm departure in January begins in full dark and ends under lanterns; the same departure in late June begins in daylight and only reaches proper dusk near the end. One operator says so in its own listing and moves its 6:00pm and 6:20pm summer walks into an early-evening slot because of it.
If lantern light is the reason you are here, the months either side of the winter solstice give you the most of it. Between October and February you get full darkness from about half past five, which means a two-hour walk is a two-hour night walk.
What stays open after sunset — and what shuts at six
Kyoto's headline sights divide neatly. The shrines and the streets never close and cost nothing; the temples with gates, the market and the museums keep office hours. Fushimi Inari has no gate at all, so its torii path is walkable at three in the morning, though the office and shops stop at about five in the afternoon. Yasaka Shrine's grounds are the same, with its lantern stage lit through the evening.
The one that catches people out is Nishiki Market, where individual shops open between nine and eleven and most are shut by six. A food tour that starts at five catches the last of it. One that starts at six does not, and its evening is built around izakaya instead.
Six places a night tour passes, and what each of them is doing once the sun is down.
| Place | Open after dark | Admission | What is lit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fushimi Inari-taisha | 24 hours, unstaffed after about 5pm | Free | The lower torii path |
| Yasaka Shrine | Grounds 24 hours; inner shrine 9am–5pm | Free | The lantern stage and the Romon gate |
| Gion and Pontocho streets | Always — they are public roads | Free | Machiya frontages and shop lanterns |
| Arashiyama Bamboo Grove | 24 hours | Free | Nothing. There is no permanent lighting |
| Hōkan-ji (the Yasaka Pagoda) | Exterior always; interior daytime only | Free from the street | The pagoda itself, floodlit |
| Nishiki Market | Most shops shut by about 6pm | Free | The arcade, while the shops are open |
What an evening costs beyond the tour price
Less than most cities. The shrines and the streets are free, a single subway ride is ¥220 to ¥360 and a day pass is ¥800. On the walking tours you are buying a guide and nothing else, so budget for dinner afterwards; on the food evenings the meal and the drinks are already in the fare, which is most of the price difference between the two kinds of night out.
The exception is the Pontocho pub crawl, where the guide picks the rooms and orders for the table but you pay for what you eat and drink at each of three stops. That operator also asks you to bring cash, because the bill is split at the first two venues and the third works on cash delivery.
Work out which evening you are buying
The walking tours run from $18 and buy a guide. The food evenings start at $41 and buy the food as well. Both are compared side by side, with what each one includes.
Getting around after dark: subway, bus and taxi
Almost every evening listed here begins and ends within a few hundred metres of Gion-Shijo or Kawaramachi, which is the most connected corner of the city. The Keihan line runs along the east bank of the Kamo River and the Hankyu line under Shijo-dori, and the municipal subway's two lines cross at Karasuma Oike. From any of those you are one short ride from anywhere central.
The two that do not fit that pattern are the Arashiyama ghost walk, which meets at Saga-Arashiyama Station in the far west, and the Fushimi Inari walk, which meets at the shrine's main entrance beside Inari Station in the south. Both are a longer ride each way, and both are worth building the evening around rather than squeezing in.
The last train, and how not to miss it
The municipal subway runs from about five in the morning to about eleven at night on both lines, with fewer trains at each end. Every tour listed here finishes comfortably before that: the latest of them ends around ten. If you carry on to a bar afterwards, which plenty of people do, taxis run all night and are the normal way home.
| Getting home | Runs until | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Karasuma and Tōzai subway lines | About 11pm | ¥220–360 a ride |
| Subway day pass | — | ¥800 adult |
| Subway and bus day pass | — | ¥1,100 adult |
| Taxi | All night | Metered; the usual way home after 11pm |
Booking: how far ahead these evenings sell out
Further ahead than you would expect. The operators publish their own average booking lead times and they run from 29 to 68 days. The reason is capacity rather than fashion: six people on one food tour, seven on two more, eight or ten on several of the walks. A week is usually comfortable, but early April and late November — blossom and autumn colour — are the two windows where a few days is not enough.
Almost all of them refund in full if you cancel more than 24 hours ahead, which makes booking early close to free. One food evening is non-refundable and says so on its own card, and one dinner publishes two different windows, so read the card before you pay.
Where to base yourself for a night tour
Anywhere within a ten-minute walk of Gion-Shijo, Kawaramachi or Sanjo puts you at the meeting point of most of these evenings on foot, which matters more after dark than it does by day. Higashiyama itself is quieter and more atmospheric but steeper and further from the subway. Kyoto Station is well connected and twenty minutes from the districts these walks actually cover.
Wherever you stay, none of these operators collects you from your hotel. Every one of them meets at a named point, and the Kyoto Night Tours card for each tour says which. The meeting-point map puts all eight of them in one place, and what to expect on the night covers what to bring.