Osaka

Osaka is fifteen minutes from Kyoto on the shinkansen and about forty on the ordinary rapid train, which is close enough that the two cities function as one base with two personalities. Osaka has the cheaper rooms, the later nights and the airport with the international departures. Kyoto has the temples. A lot of people sleep here and commute the other way, and that is a defensible plan rather than a compromise.

The eating is the reason to give it its own nights. Osaka's food culture is standing, sharing and cheap by design — takoyaki from a stall, kushikatsu skewers with the communal sauce you dip once, okonomiyaki cooked on the plate in front of you. The city's reputation for this is deserved, and it is at its best a street or two back from Dotonbori's neon, where the same dishes cost less and the queue is local.

Beyond food and the castle grounds, Osaka is a working city rather than a sightseeing one, and it does not pretend otherwise. Use it for the things it is good at: an evening out, a cheaper bed, the day trip to Nara or Himeji, and a short morning transfer to Kansai International. Two nights covers all of that. A third is only worth it if you are using the city as a base for Kyoto as well.