VacationSelector

Kyoto or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Kyoto
✓ Best match
58
match

Wins on good for families and value for money with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

KyotoWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 1 points.1
KyotoWashington DC
Score1718
Swim season months53
Beaches 10 km01
Coast distance47 km34 km
Water distance47 km34 km
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 7 points.7
KyotoWashington DC
Score8477
Restaurants within 2 km of centre5,0231,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2236
Museums & heritage. Kyoto leads by 17 points.17
KyotoWashington DC
Score7255
Museums within 10 km13283
Museums within 2 km of centre5155
Share of museums within 2 km %3966
Unesco sites within 50 km40
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 19 points.19
KyotoWashington DC
Score8061
Drinking venues within 4 km3,2151,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre2,363593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7358
Nightclubs within 4 km2654
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 20 points.20
KyotoWashington DC
Score2242
Protected land share 50 km %210
Landscape blanket share 50 km %21
Land share of disc %10094
Park area within 2 km45 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Kyoto leads by 28 points.28
KyotoWashington DC
Score6638
Tourist attractions within 2 km627
Park area within 2 km45 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 24 points.24
KyotoWashington DC
Score5276
Notable places within 2 km79305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Kyoto leads by 27 points.27
KyotoWashington DC
Score7043
Price level global62.4100
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. Kyoto and Washington DC are level on 62.
KyotoWashington DC
Score6262
Monthly daytime high8.6 °C to 32.4 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall40 mm to 232 mm65 mm to 108 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
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Kyoto
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Kyoto
47
67
112
150
147
232
225
149
215
108
68
40
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Kyoto
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Kyoto
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5
Washington DC
No sunshine record

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). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromKyotoWashington DC
SeoulICN, GMP
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 81 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
TokyoHND, NRT
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 39 km
13 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 30 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
13 h 10 m
no fares
KIX · 81 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
SeattleSEA, BFI
10 h 10 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
5 h 5 m
€329-399
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
San FranciscoSFO
10 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
5 h 15 m
€284-334
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
HonoluluHNL
8 h 25 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 39 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
Abu DhabiAUH
9 h 40 m
€810-860
3 stops
KIX · 81 km
14 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 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 2026-08 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

MeasureKyotoWashington DC
Official languageJapanese–
CurrencyYen (JPY)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119911
Elevation51 m72 m
Main airportKansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureKyotoWashington DC
City population1,463,723689,545
People per km²1,7683,896
Museums within 10 km7699
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km40
Distinct cuisines in the centre8982
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Kyoto or Washington DC 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. 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.