Kanazawa or Kyoto?

Neither city is a beach destination, but Kanazawa at least has the sea a few kilometres away, with long sandy shores at Uchinada and at Chirihama, where cars drive on the sand, that make a pleasant summer half-day. Kyoto is inland, so its nearest swimming is freshwater at Omi-Maiko on Lake Biwa, and the clear Sea of Japan coast at Amanohashidate means an overnight trip.

Both are serious food cities, but they lean different ways. Kanazawa's strength is the cold sea: seafood bowls, sweet shrimp and winter snow crab at Omicho Market, plus Kaga dishes such as jibuni duck stew and nodoguro, and a few days covers the core of it.

Kyoto goes deeper and finer. Kaiseki in Gion's wooden houses, shojin ryori in temple precincts such as Daitokuji, tofu and yuba, Nishiki Market's pickles and the Fushimi sake breweries give far more to work through, with the emphasis on vegetables and tea-ceremony refinement rather than fresh fish.

Both escaped wartime bombing and kept their old townscapes, so the difference is one of scale. Kanazawa has one of Japan's great gardens in Kenroku-en, the latticed teahouses of Higashi Chaya, Nagamachi's samurai walls and an outstanding contemporary art museum, a set you can see properly in two or three days.

Kyoto, capital for more than a thousand years, has seventeen UNESCO-listed sites, from Kinkaku-ji and Kiyomizu-dera to the moss garden of Saiho-ji, along with the Fushimi Inari gates and the Kyoto National Museum. It can fill a week, though at its famous sights you share the view with far more people than in Kanazawa.

Neither suits a big night out, and evenings in both run to izakaya, sake bars and small whisky bars. Kanazawa's are packed into the snack-bar grid of Katamachi and Kigura-machi, full of local office workers and with almost no clubs. Kyoto adds the lantern-lit Pontocho alley, summer terraces over the Kamo River and a few student clubs in Kiyamachi, and Osaka's late scene is under an hour away by train.

Kyoto has nature right at its edge and easy to use without a car: trails into the Higashiyama hills, the bamboo of Arashiyama, the cedar path from Kurama to Kibune and boats down the Hozu gorge.

Kanazawa's own riverbanks and low hills are gentler and smaller. Its bigger landscapes, alpine Mount Hakusan and the terraced rice fields of the Noto coast, are wilder than anything near Kyoto but need a car and a long day. In winter they draw skiers more than walkers.

Kanazawa has one outstanding outing in the thatched farmhouses of Shirakawa-go, with Takayama, Takaoka's Zuiryu-ji and the Kaga hot-spring towns behind it, but several of these depend on buses and long days.

Kyoto sits inside a dense rail network. Nara's deer and great Buddha, Uji's Byodo-in, Osaka and Himeji Castle are each under an hour away, and Kobe and the Lake Biwa towns add more, so you can decide the night before and still be back for dinner.

Kanazawa has little in the city that is built for children. The playful 21st Century Museum, where they can stand beneath the pool, and the trap doors of the ninja temple are the highlights, and the zoo, the summer beaches and Fukui's dinosaur museum all mean a drive. The calm, spotless streets help, but young children can find the gardens and teahouses at its core slow.

Kyoto has much more aimed at them: the steam roundhouse and train simulators at the Railway Museum, an aquarium and zoo near the centre and samurai shows at Toei Studio Park. Nara's deer and Osaka's theme park are a short train ride away. The price is temple stairs, packed buses in peak season and draining summer heat.

Kanazawa's main sights sit in a compact band about 2km from the station and are pleasant to walk, but with no metro or tram everything else rests on loop buses that can be slow, and snow makes winter walking harder.

Kyoto's flat central grid is better still for walking and cycling, and the Kamo River paths give a quiet route north to south. Its temples are spread round the edge of the basin, yet JR lines, private railways and the Randen tram mean trains can take much of the strain that buses alone carry in Kanazawa.

Kanazawa's shopping is narrow and distinctive. It is built around the gold leaf the city makes for almost all of Japan, which turns up on lacquerware, cosmetics and even sweets in the chaya districts. Kutani porcelain, Kaga yuzen silk and Ohi tea bowls fill out the craft side, and Tatemachi and Korinbo cover everyday shopping.

Kyoto has far more range. Family-run makers sell Nishijin textiles, Kiyomizu-ware, fans, incense and hand-forged knives, the Teramachi and Shinkyogoku arcades run from antique prints to cheap clothes, and Shijo has the big department stores. Kanazawa has nothing to match the monthly flea markets at To-ji and Kitano Tenmangu.

Kanazawa is the slightly cheaper stay, mainly because its station business hotels are plentiful and fairly priced, while Kyoto's rooms become scarce and costly in the cherry blossom and autumn colour seasons. Everyday eating is good value in both, and the splurges differ: snow crab and top Omicho seafood in Kanazawa, a kaiseki dinner in Kyoto. Kanazawa's bus fares to Shirakawa-go and Shinkansen tickets add to a trip in a way Kyoto's inexpensive local trains do not.

Kanazawa does well for its size, with regular Noh at the prefectural theatre, dance and shamisen in the chaya teahouses and the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, but there is little beyond that.

Kyoto gives you more to build an evening around: the spring dances of its five geisha districts, kabuki at the Minamiza, the oldest kabuki house in Japan, several Noh stages, Gion Corner's samplers and opera and dance at ROHM Theatre. Much of its traditional calendar is seasonal, so it pays to time a visit.

Kanazawa's strength is hot springs close at hand: Yuwaku is half an hour away in the hills, the Kaga towns of Yamanaka and Yamashiro make an easy overnight, and the city itself never feels crowded. Kyoto relies more on its century-old neighbourhood sento, zazen sessions and nights in temple lodgings, with Arima's onsen an hour away, though at its famous sights you only find calm early in the morning or at the northern temples. Neither is a spa city in the international sense, so the real choice is between quieter onsen and deeper temple calm.