Spring in Kyoto is everything you've been told it is, and also nothing like it.
Arashiyama at 6 AM
Everyone photographs the bamboo grove. Almost no one does it at dawn. I walked in alone at six in the morning, mist still hanging between the stalks, the only sound my own footsteps on gravel. By nine the crowds would be three-deep on the path.
If you go, go early. If you can't go early, go in the rain.
A breakfast ritual
Every morning I walked ten minutes from the guesthouse to a small cafe called Kissa Madoka. The owner, an old woman who spoke no English, would nod me toward my usual seat by the window. Thick toast, a soft-boiled egg, a small salad, and a pot of pour-over coffee.
She never asked what I wanted. She remembered from day two.
The quiet temples
Everyone visits Kinkaku-ji and Fushimi Inari. They're worth it — barely. The temples that stayed with me were the ones whose names I never learned.
Travel, I think, is really about collecting these.