Small plates are back!
Tourist-dodging flavor-maxing Ultimate Kyoto Travel Guide Epiphanies
Welcome to Blackbird Spyplane
Our Home Goods Index, full of things to enliven the place you live, and stores where you can find them, is here.
Mach 3+ city intel for traveling the entire planet is here.
The B.L.I.S.S. List — a handy rundown of Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples, from incense to sweatpants to underwear — is here.
Last summer, after eating the most delicious dinner in all of Copenhagen, we declared in our Wonders of Copenhagen Guide that Small Plates Are Over.
A few weeks ago, we ate the most delicious dinner in all of Kyoto — and we’re ready to announce that Small Plates Are Back baby!
The trick is that they gotta be truly small. Stand-up izakaya small. None of this played-out bourgeois “Have you eaten here, before we do things a little differently” hogwash. Because there’s nothing quite like gazing down upon a miniature skyline of tiny dishes stacked before you — streaked with shichimi togarashi, yuzu kosho and soy sauce — and then signaling to the king behind the counter to order up a few more.
During our recent 3-week Japan Recon Mission, we zigzagged between cool cities and beautiful countrysides, great shops and wonderful bars, delicious restaurants and fantastic museums. We ate tremendously, saw outsize beauty, averaged 18,000 steps a day — and took notes and photos of everything, so you can do it, too.
On Tuesday we published our Ultimate Tokyo Guide 2025.
But on this trip we were especially stoked to spend more time in Kyoto than we’ve spent there before.
We’d heard that the city had become (almost debilitatingly??) overrun with tourists. But we were happy to discover that, though you definitely encounter certain vibe-harshingly gridlocked zones, it’s easy to steer clear of the throngs if you know where to go. Which, naturally, we do.
Today we’re thrilled to unveil the Spyplane Ultimate Kyoto Guide 2025.
In Kyoto we didn’t just have the single best dinner of the whole trip. We visited the flagship shop of our favorite incense-maker on the planet. We posted up at a delicious tiny pourover-coffee counter run by a chill G who roasts his beans in the back. It was so deeply cozy we wanted to move in.
I (Jonah) communed with two world-class multi-label clothing stores that stock pieces you aren’t likely to find anywhere else, among other great shops. And if you’re wondering about fresh mountain vegetables?? Uh — yeah — I’m thinking we ate a ton of those.
Our home base through it all was a banging 100-year-old traditional house in a quiet, convenient neighborhood, which made our time in the city a minimum of ~33.3% more wavier.
You can rent it, too.
We’re grateful to ourselves for being great at recon, and we’re grateful to the illustrious Spyfriends whose recommendations helped make this whole trip to Japan our most satisfying one yet, including:
Ryota and Joshua from Auralee, Yuji from Ernie Palo, Shinya from Maidens, Dan from James Coward, Toshi from Cottle, writer, photographer, kissa expert and 20+ year Tokyo resident Craig Mod, Oliver Church, Keith from Henry’s, Alex from A. Presse, Evan Kinori, Akari Tachibana, Dan from Bar Part Time, Ezra Koenig, Chelsea Jones, Adam Wray, Robin at Heath Ceramics, Nur from Gnuhr, Natsuko from Goldwin 0, and all the tied-in locals who blessed us with gems along the way. We have to shout out the bustling Kyoto thread in our Global Intel Travel Chat, too.
Enjoy!
— Jonah & Erin
Our guides are exclusively available to Classified-Recon Tier Spyfriends. Thank you for keeping this reader-powered independent miracle alive.
Our interviews with Adam Sandler, Steven Yeun, Nathan Fielder, Patrick Radden Keefe, Kim Gordon, André 3000, Father John Misty, Rachel Kushner, Mac DeMarco, Danielle Haim, David Grann, Matty Matheson, Seth Rogen, Laraaji, Sandy Liang, Tyler, The Creator, Maya Hawke, Rashida Jones, MJ Lenderman, John C. Reilly, Clairo, Conner O’Malley and more are here.
We don’t run ads, we refuse gifts, and we don’t use affiliate links when we cover new clothes. We do use them for one-off secondhand gems we find on eBay and Etsy, plus books on the independent bookseller Bookshop. We laid out our position on affiliate links and spon here.
