This "avoid the beaten path for tourists" but also "pick Kyoto". Hmmm.
If you really do want to go (slightly) off the beaten path, try Yokohama (a short hop from Tokyo), Kobe (rebuilt and revitalized since the ruinous earthquake, Fukuoka, Nagano (Winter Olympic city) or Sapporo. Or even take a domestic flight down to Okinawa and visit Naha.
To go off the beaten track in Tokyo, stay in Ikebukuro an unfashionable but IMHO awesome Tokyo hub. For amazing coffee there check out the insanely superb Mermaid Coffee Roasters and its stunning top two floors featuring the owner's curated furniture. Add their knock out baked goods and you won't want to leave. Minami-Ikebukuro park is a nice spot to relax on bright days (next to Blue Bottle coffee) though avoid the in-park Racine's Farm to Table and check out their sister Vietnamese restaurant Raindrop on the trendy Azuma street. Also be sure to walk further along Azuma to the Toden-Zoshigaya Station of the Tokyo Sakura tram line, the last surviving tram in Tokyo, and take it all the way to the Minowabashi terminus and explore the adjacent covered arcade for a taste of old Tokyo.
> This "avoid the beaten path for tourists" but also "pick Kyoto". Hmmm
People conflate Kyoto with the Gion + Kinkaku-ji + Arashiyama + Fushimi Inari. Kyoto city is much wider than that, and every street, especially in the Gion, is dense with history. There's dozens of bridges crossing the Kamogawa river, but most tourists are likely crossing over the one at Gion-shijo. Most tourists don't even stray 1km away from there to see there are stones you can hop over the water with. Sanjo bridge, the first bridge north of Gion-shijo, has sword marks on it from a famous shinsengumi battle. Kyoto, like Jerusalem or Rome, is filled with history on every block. Nearby Sanjo bridge is the temple where Nobunaga Oda was ambushed and forced to commit suicide. Also nearby is a random milestone during the day but at night a fortune teller sets up a shop claiming to channel the spirit of a politician who was assassinated in the exact spot. Most tourists and even Japanese locals would not ever notice the network of mahjong gambling dens hiding in plain site throughout Kyoto city, even in the subway station, but that's not going to be obvious from Google Maps, AtlasObscura, or what have you.
Obviously I'm biased because our startup is based in Kyoto and the company name is based on the Kamogawa river.
But, honestly, even the tourist hotspots are nice to visit. Kyoto has so many amazing things to see, both popular and off the beaten path, that it’s absurd not to recommend if you want to learn more about Japanese culture.
- randomly encountered local summer festival, including nice juicy karage and an exhibition of harvesters! :)
- the marvelous Kyoto Railway museum
- Kyoto auqarium with dolphin show
- a Budhist temple that looks like a Shinto shrine (as couple years ago when state required the amalgamated Shino/Budhist institutions to split tehy decided to be a temple)
Looks like the inky nainstream thing we managed to visit was the amazing Kyoto Railway station :)
I went to a railway museum and aquarium in Tokyo this past week, and the two you mentioned in Kyoto were surprisingly good, especially given how relatively small the aquarium was.
If you walk literally fifty meters in any direction from the tourist hotspots in Kyoto you’ll get an entirely different view of Kyoto, often including a reflection of the charms that brought people to the hotspots.
YMMV; I only lived there for a year and it was a long time ago now.
If you really do want to go (slightly) off the beaten path, try Yokohama (a short hop from Tokyo), Kobe (rebuilt and revitalized since the ruinous earthquake, Fukuoka, Nagano (Winter Olympic city) or Sapporo. Or even take a domestic flight down to Okinawa and visit Naha.
To go off the beaten track in Tokyo, stay in Ikebukuro an unfashionable but IMHO awesome Tokyo hub. For amazing coffee there check out the insanely superb Mermaid Coffee Roasters and its stunning top two floors featuring the owner's curated furniture. Add their knock out baked goods and you won't want to leave. Minami-Ikebukuro park is a nice spot to relax on bright days (next to Blue Bottle coffee) though avoid the in-park Racine's Farm to Table and check out their sister Vietnamese restaurant Raindrop on the trendy Azuma street. Also be sure to walk further along Azuma to the Toden-Zoshigaya Station of the Tokyo Sakura tram line, the last surviving tram in Tokyo, and take it all the way to the Minowabashi terminus and explore the adjacent covered arcade for a taste of old Tokyo.