VacationSelector

Boston or Kyoto?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Boston
55
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Kyoto
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on museums & heritage and value for money with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

BostonKyoto
Beaches & swimming. Boston leads by 43 points.43
BostonKyoto
Score6017
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km680
Coast distance1 km47 km
Water distance1 km47 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 11 points.11
BostonKyoto
Score7384
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4525,023
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3222
Museums & heritage. Kyoto leads by 29 points.29
BostonKyoto
Score4372
Museums within 10 km79132
Museums within 2 km of centre2751
Share of museums within 2 km %3439
Unesco sites within 50 km04
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 22 points.22
BostonKyoto
Score5880
Drinking venues within 4 km8863,215
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre5132,363
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5873
Nightclubs within 4 km4326
Nature & day trips. Boston leads by 31 points.31
BostonKyoto
Score5322
Protected land share 50 km %122
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %77100
Park area within 2 km116 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Kyoto leads by 13 points.13
BostonKyoto
Score5366
Tourist attractions within 2 km2862
Park area within 2 km116 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km04
Sights concentration. Boston leads by 6 points.6
BostonKyoto
Score5852
Notable places within 2 km11179
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 27 points.27
BostonKyoto
Score4370
Price level global10062.4
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Kyoto leads by 6 points.6
BostonKyoto
Score5662
Monthly daytime high2.9 °C to 28 °C8.6 °C to 32.4 °C
Monthly rainfall79 mm to 107 mm40 mm to 232 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Boston
3
4
8
14
19
25
28
27
23
17
11
6
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Sea temperature, °C
Boston
5
3
4
6
10
15
18
19
17
14
10
8
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Boston
84
79
105
91
83
99
82
80
90
101
93
107
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Daylight, hours per day
Boston
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Boston
5
5
6
7
8
8
9
9
7
5
5
4
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Boston: 1991-2020 normals, Boston Logan International (3.5 km from centre). Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBostonKyoto
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 35 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 81 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 0 m
€192-203
BOS · 4 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
TokyoHND, NRT
13 h 25 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 39 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 50 m
€536-548
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
2 h 20 m
€176-196
BOS · 4 km
12 h 55 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
5 h 35 m
€289-344
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 10 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
San FranciscoSFO
5 h 45 m
€341-440
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€211-283
1 stop
BOS · 4 km
13 h 10 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
Abu DhabiAUH
13 h 15 m
no fares
BOS · 4 km
9 h 40 m
€810-860
3 stops
KIX · 81 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureBostonKyoto
Official languageJapanese
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Yen (JPY)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number911Police 110, fire 119
Elevation43 m51 m
Main airportBoston Logan International Airport (BOS)4 km from centre144 non-stop destinationsKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureBostonKyoto
City population675,6471,463,723
People per km²2,9101,768
Museums within 10 km5176
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km04
Distinct cuisines in the centre7489
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Boston or Kyoto somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.