Kyoto or Yokohama?
Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.
Your match
Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.
Wins on nature & day trips and beaches & swimming with your weighting.
What matters to you?
Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.
The verdict
Choose Kyoto if the trip is built around museums, heritage and eating out: it holds about twice as many museums as Yokohama, 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and more notable places within walking distance of the centre.
Choose Yokohama if you want the sea 1km from the centre, beaches you can reach, more park space and more theme parks for a trip with children.
Scoreboard
Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.
Beaches & swimming. Yokohama leads by 32 points.32
| Kyoto | Yokohama | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 17 | 49 |
| Swim season months | 5 | 5 |
| Beaches 10 km | 0 | 2 |
| Coast distance | 47 km | 1 km |
| Water distance | 47 km | 1 km |
Places to eat. Kyoto leads by 6 points.6
| Kyoto | Yokohama | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 84 | 78 |
| Restaurants within 2 km of centre | 5,023 | 3,004 |
| Effective number of cuisines within 2 km | 22 | 24 |
Museums & heritage. Kyoto leads by 19 points.19
| Kyoto | Yokohama | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 72 | 53 |
| Museums within 10 km | 132 | 57 |
| Museums within 2 km of centre | 51 | 31 |
| Share of museums within 2 km % | 39 | 54 |
| Unesco sites within 50 km | 4 | 1 |
Nightlife. Kyoto leads by 6 points.6
| Kyoto | Yokohama | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 80 | 74 |
| Drinking venues within 4 km | 3,215 | 2,344 |
| Drinking venues within 2 km of centre | 2,363 | 1,498 |
| Share of drinking venues within 2 km % | 73 | 64 |
| Nightclubs within 4 km | 26 | 33 |
Nature & day trips. Yokohama leads by 36 points.36
| Kyoto | Yokohama | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 22 | 58 |
| Protected land share 50 km % | 2 | — |
| Landscape blanket share 50 km % | 2 | 0 |
| Land share of disc % | 100 | 67 |
| Park area within 2 km | 45 hectares | 88 hectares |
Good for families. Kyoto leads by 8 points.8
| Kyoto | Yokohama | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 66 | 58 |
| Tourist attractions within 2 km | 62 | 16 |
| Park area within 2 km | 45 hectares | 88 hectares |
| Theme parks within 30 km | 4 | 8 |
Sights concentration. Kyoto leads by 8 points.8
| Kyoto | Yokohama | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 52 | 44 |
| Notable places within 2 km | 79 | 49 |
| Min wikipedia languages | 5 | 5 |
Value for money. Kyoto and Yokohama are level on 70.
| Kyoto | Yokohama | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 70 | 70 |
| Price level global | 62.4 | 62.4 |
| Daily budget | — | — |
Year-round weather. Yokohama leads by 1 points.1
| Kyoto | Yokohama | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 62 | 63 |
| Monthly daytime high | 8.6 °C to 32.4 °C | 9.5 °C to 30.1 °C |
| Monthly rainfall | 40 mm to 232 mm | 46 mm to 219 mm |
| Dry months | 0 | 0 |
Where they differ
Kyoto's strength is heritage: about twice as many museums as Yokohama, and 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach against 1. Its notable places also cluster more tightly, so more of a day can be done on foot from the centre. The sea, though, is 47km away, with no beaches nearby.
Yokohama has roughly twice as much park space near the centre, which is where its edge on days out comes from, and the water is 1km from the centre, with 2 beaches within reach.
Where they are alike
The two share a weather pattern: Kyoto runs 9-32°C across the year, Yokohama 10-30°C, and no month in either falls to 40mm of rain or less. Both give 5 months of sea at 21°C or more.
Eating and nights out are alike in character. Both cover a comparable range of kitchens, and in both the drinking places sit mostly near the centre, with Kyoto holding more bars and Yokohama more clubs.
Which traveller are you?
Someone travelling for museums and heritage should take Kyoto: roughly twice the museum count, 4 UNESCO-listed places within day-trip reach, and a centre where the notable places sit close enough together to walk between.
Families split by age. Kyoto has about three times as many tourist attractions near the centre; Yokohama answers with more park space, 8 theme parks against 4, and beaches 1km from the centre for younger children.
Anyone here to eat and go out late leans Kyoto, with about twice as many restaurants near the centre and more bars, though Yokohama has more nightclubs and both keep the drinking central.
What the numbers don't tell you
The value figure is a national price level and is identical for the two by construction, so it tells you nothing about how one compares with the other. No daily budget figure exists for either city, which means no cost comparison between them is possible at all; assume nothing and check prices yourself.
Warm months are also wet months here. Yokohama's coastal advantage rests on 2 beaches and sea at 21°C or more for 5 months, but that window sits inside the rainiest stretch, and Kyoto's strongest months carry 147-215mm.
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.
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). Yokohama: 1971-2000 (sunshine 1991-2020) normals, Yokohama (1.6 km from centre).
Kyoto reads best in May, around 24°C with 147mm, and again in October, when highs near 22°C come with 108mm, clearly drier than Yokohama in the same month. Early autumn is heavy in both.
Yokohama is the better July choice, at about 28°C and 145mm, where Kyoto is hotter at 31°C and wetter at 225mm. Winter is thin on both sides, with highs of 9-10°C and little to separate them.
Getting there
| Flying from | Kyoto | Yokohama |
|---|---|---|
| SeoulICN, GMP | 1 h 40 m €107-142 KIX · 81 km | 2 h 10 m €124-187 NRT · 77 km |
| ShanghaiPVG, SHA | 2 h 10 m €237-303 KIX · 81 km | 2 h 45 m €296-314 HND · 18 km |
| SapporoCTS, OKD | 1 h 55 m no fares ITM · 39 km | 1 h 40 m €149-164 HND · 18 km |
| BangkokBKK, DMK | 5 h 35 m €288-317 KIX · 81 km | 6 h 10 m €318-337 NRT · 77 km |
| Hong KongHKG | 3 h 35 m €254-314 KIX · 81 km | 4 h 10 m €255-268 NRT · 77 km |
| OkinawaOKA | 2 h 5 m €120-154 KIX · 81 km | 2 h 30 m €194-253 HND · 18 km |
| SingaporeSIN, XSP | 6 h 25 m no fares KIX · 81 km | 6 h 55 m €353-477 1 stop HND · 18 km |
| HonoluluHNL | 8 h 25 m no fares ITM · 39 km | 7 h 55 m no fares HND · 18 km |
| ParisCDG, ORY, BVA | 12 h 0 m €859-891 3 stops KIX · 81 km | 12 h 5 m €835-923 HND · 18 km |
| DohaDOH | 10 h 0 m no fares KIX · 81 km | 10 h 25 m €931-1048 1 stop HND · 18 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
| Measure | Kyoto | Yokohama |
|---|---|---|
| Official language | Japanese | Japanese |
| Currency | Yen (JPY) | Yen (JPY) |
| Sockets | AB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region | AB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region |
| Driving side | Left | Left |
| Time zone | UTC+9 | UTC+9 |
| Emergency number | Police 110, fire 119 | Police 110, fire 119 |
| Elevation | 51 m | 24 m |
| Main airport | Kansai International Airport (KIX)81 km from centre62 non-stop destinations | Tokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations |
| Public holidays this year | 16 days | 16 days |
By the numbers
| Measure | Kyoto | Yokohama |
|---|---|---|
| City population | 1,463,723 | 3,757,630 |
| People per km² | 1,768 | 8,585 |
| Museums within 10 km | 76 | 38 |
| UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km | 4 | 1 |
| Distinct cuisines in the centre | 89 | 66 |
| Swim season, months above 21 °C | 5 months | 5 months |
Where else could you go?
Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Kyoto or Yokohama somewhere new.