It’s possible to get an overload of temples in Kyoto. And with beautiful sites easily accessible, the imperial gardens of Shugakuin and Katsura Villa may be overlooked by non-Japanese tourists. Certainly if you have a shortage of time, you may not want to allocate two hours to the imperial sites. However, I certainly think they are worth a visit – the landscaping is remarkable. These were residences after all, of Japan’s former royal families.

Between the two, Shugakuin is more spread out – consisting of three linked gardens and sections, including a beautiful pine-lined road. Katsura Villa is more compact with gardens that are arguably more manicured. For architecture buffs, it is Katsura Villa’s zen simplicity that greatly influenced the 20th century’s modernist builders.   No dripping Versailles chandeliers here – you can certainly see where Le Corbusier got some of his ideas.

The visits are conducted in Japanese but there are English audio guides available.  Unfortunately, the audio guides are not as informative but I was happy just to be able to follow  the group and snap photos. I can understand why they want to restrict the groups – some of the paths are very narrow. The good part of this is that you won’t have to fight through a boat load of other tourists for a view. The bad part is that you can’t wander off at your own pace as a guard will shepherd you along. I’ve annoyed my share of guards in this respect – play dumb, smile and apologize.

The villas are managed by the Imperial Household Agency so if you want to visit you’ll have to get approval – basically akin to signing up in advance for a spot to tour the place at an assigned time. The easiest way to do this is to contact your hotel concierge to see if they can do this for you. The Hyatt Regency and the Kyoto Okura Hotel were both able to obtain approvals for me at a fee – essentially to cover the cab ride to submit the forms in person.

Otherwise, you can try your luck applying online. There is no entrance fee to the sites. To note, I was unsuccessful in my online Katsura Villa application but the Hyatt Regency was able to get me a spot. So if you are set on going, you may want to build your itinerary around these visits as the day and time would depend on their availability.

I would allocate around two hours for the visit – basically one hour at the site and the rest being the probable travel times to and fro. I was able to tie in my visit to Shugakuin with a pleasant walk along the Tanakogawa river to lunch at Mamezen (see review), a wonderful soy based ramen restaurant. It took us around 45 minutes to get to lunch but it was a nice way to roam the place at an easy pace.

For Katsura Villa, I tied it in with a visit to nearby Arashiyama – it’s easy to catch a bus from the site. Taxis are also available at both places.

Imperial Household Agency application website: http://sankan.kunaicho.go.jp/english/