Kyoto 🇯🇵

Kyoto was Japan's capital from 794 to 1868. The vermilion gates at Fushimi Inari were each donated, with the donor's name and date carved on the back of the posts. Kinkaku-ji burned down in a 1950 arson and was rebuilt. The Arashiyama bamboo grove is on Japan's official list of soundscapes worth preserving, for the noise the wind makes in it.

The highest aesthetic reading in the pack. Beauty comes before any other criterion for you, and Kyoto is one of the few cities you can pick on that basis alone. It matters to you that the same spot looks different depending on the season.

Adventure reads low and nature slightly above the middle — not hunting for anything rough, but not wanting only concrete either. People who don't consider a slow day of walking somewhere quiet to be a wasted one end up here.

You travel well here with someone who doesn't count returning to the same spot as waste. The same temple is a different place in the morning and the evening, so a list-clearing trip misses exactly what Kyoto is good at. In brackets it runs into Tokyo constantly — two squares from one country that split taste precisely — and which one someone picks says almost everything about how they travel. Density goes to Tokyo; space goes to Kyoto.

The nearest square is Barcelona, then Bali — though neither is especially close. Kyoto reads so high on aesthetic that it struggles to find a partner. The furthest is New York, and the split there is exactly space against density.