Japan is a country with a long, fascinating history, and the Japanese people are all well versed in and quite proud of that history. As a result, much of the local tourism within Japan tends to center around visiting places of historical significance.
While such sites abound throughout Japan (thanks again to the Japanese people's appreciation for their history), few Japanese cities can rival the former imperial capital of Kyoto for quantity and beauty of historical buildings and artifacts.
Kyoto is located to the west of Tokyo, approximately 2 ½ hours by bullet train (anywhere from five to eight hours by car, one never knows in Japan) and served as the imperial capital from 794-1867, whereas Tokyo only came to prominence as the shogunal capital since 1600. Kyoto was at its height, however, during the Heian Era (794-1185), when there was no military dictatorship to share power with.
Like Nara, its predecessor, Kyoto was modeled after the Tang Dynasty Chinese capital of Changan: rectangular, with straight, bisecting streets and the imperial palace in the northeast corner. But unlike Nara, a limit was placed on Buddhist temples to keep them from overwhelming the capital (one of the possible reasons the emperor moved the capital from Nara to begin with). The strategy was successful for centuries, but you could never tell by modern Kyoto. Like Kamakura and Nara, Buddhist temples and art are everywhere.
In fact, there are a seemingly limitless supply of famous temples, shrines, gardens, battle sites and the like in Kyoto, giving it a feeling not unlike Rome: you turn the corner of a modern street and bump into something a thousand years old. Unlike Rome, however, the ancient buildings are not ruins. They are not, however, usually the original buildings either. Fire has long been the nemesis of the Japanese, with their wood and paper architecture, and it has claimed almost all of Japan's historical buildings at least once through the centuries. What nature didn't take, the firebombings of World War II finished off, such that it is now uncommon to find a building built before 1945 which has stood untouched since its construction (Himeji Castle, just outside Kyoto, comes to mind as a rare exception). Nonetheless, even the rebuilt structures are usually centuries old, and completely true to their original ancestors. That the Japanese rebuild these cultural treasures exactly as they stood before is a great tribute to their fondness for their cultural past.
