A Kyoto walking tour of two classic areas.

This is the original shrine behind the roughly 30,000 Inari shrines across Japan. It began in 711. About 10,000 vermilion gates line the hillside, standing without a gap for the 400 metres up to the inner shrine. We turn back before the summit.

Every gate was donated by someone. The donor's name and the year are carved on the back.

The wooden stage jutting out from the cliff is the face of this temple. The floor rests on 18 keyaki pillars from 400-year-old trees, joined without a single nail. It stands about 13 metres up. The temple was founded in 778 and became a World Heritage site in 1994.

Below it the Otowa waterfall falls in three streams. You drink from one only. Drinking from all three is greedy, so the saying goes.

A shop where you watch rice cakes being pounded right in front of you. It sits at the bottom of the slope from Kiyomizu-dera. The speciality is a rice cake with a whole strawberry inside, ¥1,000 each. People queue for the calls and the speed of the mallet.

It is takeaway only. The queue can be 10 to 20 minutes, and you watch the pounding the whole time.

Wooden houses still stand on both sides of the stone steps. The state has listed this district as a townscape to protect. Down the slope is Ninenzaka, where a Starbucks occupies a house over 100 years old, with tatami rooms upstairs.

Fall on this slope and you will die within three years. The saying appears in a book from 1679. The steps are steep, so it is a warning to watch your feet.

A 46-metre pagoda at the top of the slope is the landmark of this area. The present pagoda was rebuilt in 1440, but a pagoda is said to have stood here about 1,400 years ago. Next door, Yasaka Koshin-do, from 960, is hung all over with small coloured cloth balls.

The cloth balls are kukurizaru, monkeys with their hands and feet bound. The monkey stands for acting on every desire. You write one wish, hang it up, and give up one desire in return.

A wide street paved from side to side with stone. The wife of the warlord who unified Japan in the 16th century spent her later years here, and her name, Nene, is the name of the street. One turn west is Ishibei-koji. We stop for lunch here.

Part of the paving in Ishibei-koji came from the tracks of Kyoto's old tramway, after it closed.

A vermilion gate stands at the end of the street. This shrine holds the Gion Festival, the biggest in Kyoto, which began in 869. Before the gate you pass through Maruyama Park, the oldest park in Kyoto, opened in 1886. A famous cherry tree stands at its centre.

The grounds of Yasaka Shrine are open 24 hours, and there is no entrance fee.

A stone-paved street of lattice-fronted townhouses. Tea houses where geiko work stand along it. Cross north to the Shirakawa. Tatsumi Bridge is the stone bridge under the willows. At its foot is a small shrine where geiko and maiko pray to get better at their art.

The narrow lanes off Hanamikoji are private. Photography is banned there, and signs say so. Your guide will show you where you may go.