From Ise by way of the Yamato road, Yaji and Kitahachi at last reached the capital, Kyoto, and the end of the Tokaido: the Sanjo Ohashi Bridge.
The two went around seeing the sights of Kyoto: Kiyomizu Temple, Gion, Chion-in, Sanjusangendo, the East and West Honganji, Kitano Tenmangu. Everything was different from Edo, and all of it a novelty.
Kyoto people spoke softly and carried themselves with refinement. But the two Edo men were bewildered by the roundabout way Kyoto people talked and by their love of show, summed up in the saying, "Kyoto people ruin themselves on clothes."
The two leaned out from the stage of Kiyomizu Temple to admire the view and amused themselves at the teahouses of Gion, but Kyoto people made complete fools of them. A well-known story that captures the Kyoto temperament tells of a guest who, offered "a little bubuzuke, rice with tea?", waited thinking he was really going to be fed, when it actually meant "It's time you went home."
Kitahachi tried to buy a Kyoto specialty and was sold a fake, and Yaji boasted about Edo and was laughed at by Kyoto people: here too one blunder followed another.
Even so, the two were moved by the beauty of the capital and its culture with a thousand years of history: the flow of the Kamo River, the green of the Higashiyama hills, the bells of temple after temple. It was a refinement of the capital that could never be tasted in Edo.
At the foot of the Sanjo Ohashi Bridge, statues of Yaji and Kita still stand, welcoming travelers who have walked all fifty-three stations of the Tokaido. From here the two went on to Osaka, and then continued their travels to Konpira, Miyajima, the Kisoji road and Zenkoji.