Matsuo is the quiet, working end of west Kyoto — a shrine the brewers have prayed at for fourteen centuries, a startling modern garden, and a river path that almost nobody walks. Four kilometres, best in the afternoon, ending under the Arashiyama hills.
Start at Matsuo Taisha, one of the city's oldest jinja (shrines) and the patron of sake — the casks stacked by the gate are offerings from brewers across Japan. Behind the hall, the wooded slope is the original holy ground. Pay in to the Shoyo-en gardens for the surprise: three dry landscapes by Mirei Shigemori, his final work, standing stones set hard against a site this old. Drink at the Kamenoi spring, the water that starts the brewing, before you leave.
Then east to the Katsura and north along the embankment — wide sky, herons, the western hills the whole way. You're tracing the watershed that made this a brewing country; the Suntory distillery lies off to the south-east. The path lands you below the Togetsukyo, with Arashiyama ahead and Hankyu Arashiyama a few minutes back.
