KYOTO -- Summer here is especially hot. But a half-hour train ride from the city center takes you to the cool, mountainous town of Kibune. Centered around the Kibune Shrine along a 5-km stretch of the Kibune River (which flows into the Kamo River), restaurants, inns and shops set out their wares.
What's special about the restaurants is that during summer they lay out boards over the river so that customers can enjoy food against the backdrop of green mountains . . with their feet dangling in clear running water.
"This is one of the best spots to enjoy Kyoto's summer," says Hironori Fujitani, president of Fujiya Co., which has run a restaurant and an inn here for about 180 years, the first in the area.