VacationSelector

Brussels or Kyoto?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Brussels
56
match

Wins on sights concentration and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Kyoto
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife 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.

BrusselsKyoto
Beaches & swimming. Kyoto leads by 17 points.17
BrusselsKyoto
Score017
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km00
Coast distance56 km47 km
Water distance—47 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 3 points.3
BrusselsKyoto
Score8184
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,7795,023
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4422
Museums & heritage. Brussels leads by 8 points.8
BrusselsKyoto
Score8072
Museums within 10 km120132
Museums within 2 km of centre5951
Share of museums within 2 km %4939
Unesco sites within 50 km104
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 12 points.12
BrusselsKyoto
Score6880
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4143,215
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre8622,363
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6173
Nightclubs within 4 km8426
Nature & day trips. Brussels leads by 9 points.9
BrusselsKyoto
Score3122
Protected land share 50 km %62
Landscape blanket share 50 km %12
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km65 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Kyoto leads by 10 points.10
BrusselsKyoto
Score5666
Tourist attractions within 2 km2862
Park area within 2 km65 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Brussels leads by 21 points.21
BrusselsKyoto
Score7352
Notable places within 2 km25479
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 10 points.10
BrusselsKyoto
Score6070
Price level global76.262.4
Daily budget€180—
Year-round weather. Kyoto leads by 5 points.5
BrusselsKyoto
Score5762
Monthly daytime high6.1 °C to 23.3 °C8.6 °C to 32.4 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 90 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
Brussels
6
7
11
15
18
21
23
23
20
15
10
6
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Sea temperature, °C
Brussels
No coastline within reach
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Brussels
77
67
59
47
61
72
80
90
67
71
75
89
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Daylight, hours per day
Brussels
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Brussels
2
2
4
6
6
7
7
6
5
4
2
1
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. Brussels: 1991-2020 normals, Uccle (5.2 km from centre). Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrusselsKyoto
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 39 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 15 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 81 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 11 km
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 39 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 11 km
12 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 81 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 11 km
10 h 55 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
2 h 45 m
€327-334
KIX · 81 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 11 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
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

MeasureBrusselsKyoto
Official languageFrench, German, DutchJapanese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 110, fire 119
Elevation70 m51 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)11 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrusselsKyoto
City population195,5461,463,723
People per km²5,9081,768
Museums within 10 km10576
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km104
Distinct cuisines in the centre10989
Swim season, months above 21 °C–5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Brussels 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. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.