Japan is having an argument about visitors. Kyoto has closed private alleys in Gion to tourists and posted a ten thousand yen fine at the entrances. Residents in several neighbourhoods have gone to their councils about crowding, noise and photography. Almost none of it is about people being deliberately rude. It is about several hundred people a day standing still in places built for walking through.
So this page is not a lecture about respect. It is a list of where to put your body.
Before you stop, take one step to the side.
That is most of it. Stopping is not the problem — stopping in the middle is. A lane, a stairway, a gateway, a shop entrance and a bridge are all things people are trying to get through. Step out of the flow first, then look for as long as you want. Nobody minds a person standing at the edge of a street. Everybody minds a person standing in the middle of it.
The wide main street, Hanamikoji, is public and fine. The narrow lanes running off it are not — Kyoto closed several of them to non-residents, with signs in several languages and a stated fine of ten thousand yen. Those lanes are people's front doors and their route to work.
On the public street, keep to one side. The buildings you are photographing are working teahouses with private entrances, and standing in front of one is standing in somebody's doorway.
If you see one, she is going to work and she is almost certainly late. They move between appointments on a tight schedule in shoes that are not built for hurrying.
Do not photograph her without asking. Do not follow her. Do not touch the kimono or the hair ornaments — some of those cost as much as a small car. Do not block her path. If you would like a photograph with a maiko, book an arranged experience and pay for it, the way you would with any other professional, and she will have all the time in the world for you.
The famous corridor of vermilion gates is close to single file in places and carries thousands of people an hour. The photograph everybody wants is the one looking back down the tunnel, which means turning around and standing still inside it.
Wait for a gap in the gates and step out of the corridor first, then turn and look back. There are frequent gaps and side spaces. You will get a better photograph without a queue building behind you.
Stone-stepped lanes, and people come up them faster than you expect. Stand at the side of the steps rather than the middle. The same goes for the lane below the Yasaka Pagoda, which is the single most photographed corner in the city and about three metres wide.
The bridge over the Dotonbori canal with the running-man sign. It is narrow, it never stops moving, and it is where everybody stops. Stand at the end of the bridge rather than in the middle of it — the view of the sign is the same and you are not a bollard.
Some of the best walking in Japan is through streets where people simply live. The etiquette there is different from a temple: keep your voice down, stay at the side of the road, do not photograph into windows or doorways, and do not stand in front of somebody's house discussing it.
Pontocho in Kyoto is barely two metres across in places and is a working restaurant lane. Walk it, enjoy it, and do your standing at either end.
Use headphones. This applies to audio guides, music, videos and phone calls. Japanese trains ask passengers to keep phones silent and it is genuinely observed — a carriage of forty people will be quiet enough to hear the rails.
Keep the volume low enough to hear a bicycle behind you, because bicycles are everywhere and mostly silent. Do not play anything out loud inside a temple hall, at a shrine, or in a residential lane.
They are private property and working religious sites, not public parks. Two things cover most of it: the centre of the approach path is traditionally left clear, so walk and stand to one side of it, and photography rules vary — many halls do not allow it inside, and the sign at the door means what it says.
This page came out of finding a problem in our own product, so it is only fair to say what it was.
Every stop in a wanderaudio guide has a short instruction telling you where to be. We went through all of them and found 156 that told people to stand somewhere they would be in the way — "stand on Hanamikoji", "stop just inside the tunnel of gates", and in one case "stand in the middle of the road". Every one has been rewritten to say where to stand instead.
An audio guide makes people stop walking and look at things, which is the whole point of it and also exactly the behaviour everybody is complaining about. It seemed worth getting right.
Stopping is not rude. Stopping in the middle of a narrow lane, a doorway, a stairway or a gateway is, because somebody is behind you. The fix is one step: move to the side first, then take as long as you like. This is the single piece of etiquette that covers most complaints about visitors.
Not all of them. Kyoto closed several private alleys off Hanamikoji to non-residents, with multilingual signs and a fine of ten thousand yen posted at the entrances. The wide main street, the Shirakawa canal lane and Shijo are public and fine. If a lane has a sign, it is a private doorway.
Not without asking, and in the closed private alleys not at all. They are women going to work on a tight schedule, usually late. Do not follow them, do not touch the kimono, and do not block the way. If you want a photograph with a maiko, book a proper arranged experience and pay for it, the way you would with any other professional.
Yes, always, and keep them at a level where you can still hear a bicycle behind you. Do not play narration out loud on a train, inside a temple hall, or in a residential lane. Japanese trains ask passengers to keep phones silent and it is taken seriously.
Carry it. Public bins are genuinely scarce, which surprises people. Take a small bag and empty it at your accommodation or at a convenience store that has bins for its own customers.
The Gion alley closures and the ten thousand yen fine are widely reported; the signs are posted at the entrances in Japanese, English and Chinese. Everything else here is either long-standing local practice or what we learned working out where to put a listener at several thousand specific places.