NISHIYAMA RYOKAN Established in 1953

There are many cafes in kyoto. I like to go there to relax , chatting with my friends or reading books. for relaxing and reading books I choose very quiet cafe and must have comfy sofa. I am going to introduce some of my favorite cafes here. ☆Ace cafe ☆ Located the building of 10th floor in Kiyamachi st. you can enjoy nice Kyoto view from there. Its open 12:00-3:00am. you can have coffee , sweets also alchols and snacks. comfy sofa is there so it is very good for dating or have fun with your friends. http://www.ace-cafe.com/ ☆Quil Fait Bon ☆ This cafe is also located in Kiyamachi st. they serve very very delicious cakes. This cafe is looks like lovely white small house. In the showcase There are many cakes . when I go there I can't make my mind which cake I am going to have today,because I wanna eat all of them! open 11:00am~20:00pm http://www.quil-fait-bon.com/top/top.html ☆Cafe chobitto☆ I found this cafe when I was walking to Heian shrine this is on shinkarasuma st .I have n...

You might have been Yuka if you have visited Kyoto during summer time. Yuka means floor in Japanese. We call river side dining platform in Kyoto "YUKA". Yuka is set up along the Kamo river during summer summer time. Surprisingly first yuka appeared about 400 years ago. The beginning was nothing more than public wooden benches placed riverside. Then, wealthy people set up the bench and table along the river to entertain important visitors. After that, food stalls started opening along the riverbank. Today more than 80 restaurants set it up and and it becomes very popular attractions in Kyoto. I went to yuka first time lately. It was interesting! You can have dinner in the breez. Food was delicious. I had kaiseki dish which is kyoto's traditional meal. This photo below is kind of antipasto. You can also have French, Italian, Korean... several kinds of food at Yuka. Why don't you trying yuka another time?

It was beautiful day on last weekend. I went to walk to Heian shrine. It is bit far from our hotel but some of our guests try to walk to there sometimes so I wanted to know how long does it takes walk to there. I leave our Ryokan at 13:30pm and walk up to north for marutamachi st. When I get Marutamachi st and turn right to East. keep walking on marutamachi st to East about 15 to 20 minutes you will find the kyoto Handicraft Center Building　 →　→　→　→ http://www.kyotohandicraftcenter.com/index.html This is very popular shop for souvenir for foreign tourist　　 I saw there are many foreigners there. When you find this Handicraft center you are almost there !!! walk to South from Marutamachi st and walk about 2minutes there are many huge buildings and turn left . you will find the Big Torii(red gate for shrine) and its entrance for Heian shrine Its takes about 25minutes walk from our Hotel to Heian Shrine. there are another way to walk to there little bit closer but I wanted to visit Handi...

We changed our name "NISHIYAMA RYOKAN" from begining of September. It took 2 months to have repainted out side of the wall and we feel very sorry for the guests who stayed at our ryokan during construction. Many thanks to them! We replaced the sign put outside, the doormat (look at the picture below), the information in a room, name tags and baggage tags and so on.... The new logo is mountains and sunset. NISHIYAMA means west mountain. Mountains come from "YAMA" which is part of our name and the sunset stands for that our guests come back at sunset and we would like them to have a relax at our ryokan after sun sets. We always wait for your arrival and are glad to welcome all of our guests to our ryokan! Please have a relax and enjoy stay with us!

We are going to have KOTO concert at our Lobby on friday night(not every friday). The KOTO is a tradditional Japanese stringed musical instrument derived from chinese zithers. Koto makes sounds very beautiful and elegant . last year there are many guest come for this concert after the concert you can tough the KOTO and try to play! The charge is free and everyone can come and join the concert. The concert is not every friday nights so please ask to the recetion. next concert is 12th and 19th for this September we hope many people enjoy japanese traditional music in Japan.

As we wrote last time, we enjoyed Daimonji on 16th night. Thank you for joining us and we hope our guests enoyed it! We had more guests attending a meeting than we excepcted. The guide started to explain about Daimonji at 19:00, then more and more guests joined! They enjoyed talking with the guide also with other guests. After the meeting, we went up the roof to watch Daimonji. Many people came there, not only the guests staying at our ryokan but also the guests staying at another ryokan. These letters are to be able to watch from our roof. It was too far to take pictures. The real one is closer. It used to be able to watch 2 more letters but more high buildings have been built now a days, so we cannot watch them very much. Even though I felt summer in Kyoto. How about our gusts? I hope they did!

daimonji okuribi is a fire lit to send the souls of deceased ancestors on their way after they have returned to this world for the bon festival. In the Daimonji okuribi festival ,5 mountains are used as the stage for an okuribi of huge proportions. The festival starts at 8:00pm. Our hotel guests can enjoy this Daimonji okuribi from our Hotel roof. we can watch 3 okuribi also we are going to have English speaker interpreter at our lobby from 18:00pm. so If you do not know about this festival he can teach you in English and after that you can go up to our hotel roof and enjoy Daimonji Okuribi .