VacationSelector

Kyoto or Oslo?

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

Kyoto
58
match

Wins on nightlife and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Oslo
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips 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.

KyotoOslo
Beaches & swimming. Oslo leads by 43 points.43
KyotoOslo
Score1760
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km0163
Coast distance47 km1 km
Water distance47 km1 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 17 points.17
KyotoOslo
Score8467
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5,023853
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2234
Museums & heritage. Kyoto leads by 24 points.24
KyotoOslo
Score7248
Museums within 10 km13270
Museums within 2 km of centre5137
Share of museums within 2 km %3953
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 27 points.27
KyotoOslo
Score8053
Drinking venues within 4 km3,215695
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,363562
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7381
Nightclubs within 4 km2641
Nature & day trips. Oslo leads by 39 points.39
KyotoOslo
Score2261
Protected land share 50 km %222
Landscape blanket share 50 km %21
Land share of disc %10094
Park area within 2 km45 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Kyoto leads by 18 points.18
KyotoOslo
Score6648
Tourist attractions within 2 km6213
Park area within 2 km45 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km42
Sights concentration. Oslo leads by 17 points.17
KyotoOslo
Score5269
Notable places within 2 km79207
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 16 points.16
KyotoOslo
Score7054
Price level global62.485.1
Daily budget—€203
Year-round weather. Kyoto leads by 14 points.14
KyotoOslo
Score6248
Monthly daytime high8.6 °C to 32.4 °C0.1 °C to 22.7 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 232 mm40 mm to 104 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
Kyoto
9
9
13
20
24
27
31
32
28
22
17
11
Oslo
0
1
5
11
17
20
23
21
16
10
4
1
Sea temperature, °C
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Oslo
4
3
3
6
11
15
18
18
15
12
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Oslo
58
46
40
48
60
80
86
104
81
94
84
54
Daylight, hours per day
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Oslo
7
9
12
15
17
19
18
16
13
10
8
6
Sunshine, hours per day
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5
Oslo
2
3
5
6
8
8
8
7
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Kyoto: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Kyoto (3.2 km from centre). Oslo: 1991-2020 normals, Oslo-Blindern (4.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKyotoOslo
CopenhagenCPH
10 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
1 h 15 m
€92-109
OSL · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
2 h 5 m
€46-96
OSL · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
2 h 15 m
€145-204
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 30 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
1 h 50 m
€162-207
OSL · 37 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 81 km
10 h 50 m
no fares
OSL · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 30 m
€1,507-1966
2 stops
ITM · 39 km
2 h 0 m
€163-249
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
MunichMUC
11 h 30 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
2 h 15 m
€187-227
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
10 h 55 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
3 h 30 m
€213-241
1 stop
OSL · 37 km
DohaDOH
10 h 0 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
OSL · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
7 h 40 m
no fares
OSL · 37 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 2026-09 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

MeasureKyotoOslo
Official languageJapaneseNorwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, Sámi
CurrencyYen (JPY)Norwegian Krone (NOK)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119Police 112, ambulance 113, fire 110
Elevation51 m23 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsOslo-Gardermoen International Airport (OSL)37 km from centre58 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureKyotoOslo
City population1,463,723717,710
People per km²1,768–
Museums within 10 km7660
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre8975
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Kyoto or Oslo 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.