VacationSelector

Chicago 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

Chicago
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Kyoto
58
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage 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.

ChicagoKyoto
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 36 points.36
ChicagoKyoto
Score5317
Swim season months15
Beaches 10 km120
Coast distance10,000 km47 km
Water distance1 km47 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 3 points.3
ChicagoKyoto
Score8184
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1475,023
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3722
Museums & heritage. Kyoto leads by 26 points.26
ChicagoKyoto
Score4672
Museums within 10 km45132
Museums within 2 km of centre2051
Share of museums within 2 km %4439
Unesco sites within 50 km14
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 18 points.18
ChicagoKyoto
Score6280
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1233,215
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7282,363
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6573
Nightclubs within 4 km5126
Nature & day trips. Chicago leads by 16 points.16
ChicagoKyoto
Score3822
Protected land share 50 km %62
Landscape blanket share 50 km %02
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares45 hectares
Good for families. Kyoto leads by 11 points.11
ChicagoKyoto
Score5566
Tourist attractions within 2 km1862
Park area within 2 km118 hectares45 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km24
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 18 points.18
ChicagoKyoto
Score7052
Notable places within 2 km21779
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 27 points.27
ChicagoKyoto
Score4370
Price level global10062.4
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Kyoto leads by 5 points.5
ChicagoKyoto
Score5762
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C8.6 °C to 32.4 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 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
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
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
Chicago
No sunshine record
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. Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre). Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoKyoto
SeoulICN, GMP
13 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 81 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 39 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
4 h 0 m
€195-265
1 stop
ORD · 25 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
MinneapolisMSP, STP
1 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
12 h 20 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
HonoluluHNL
8 h 40 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
13 h 10 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
DetroitDTW, DET, YIP
1 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
13 h 5 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
Abu DhabiAUH
14 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 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

MeasureChicagoKyoto
Official language–Japanese
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Yen (JPY)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number911Police 110, fire 119
Elevation179 m51 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoKyoto
City population2,746,3881,463,723
People per km²4,5291,768
Museums within 10 km4376
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km14
Distinct cuisines in the centre8789
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Chicago 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.