A stroll through Kyoto today is a walk through 11 centuries of Japanese history. Steeped in tradition, the city has in many ways been the cradle of Japanese culture, and is still the scene of such courtly aesthetic pastimes as moon-viewing parties and tea ceremonies. Of course the city has been swept into the industrialized, high-tech age along with the rest of Japan -- plate-glass windows dominate central Kyoto and parking lots have replaced traditional town houses. Elderly women, however, continue to wear kimonos as they make their way slowly along the canal walkways. Geisha still entertain, albeit at prices out of reach for most visitors. Sixteen hundred temples and several hundred shrines surround central Kyoto. There's rather a lot to see, to say the least, so keep this in mind and don't run yourself ragged. Balance a morning at temples or museums with an afternoon in traditional shops, and a morning at the market with the rest of the day in Arashiyama or at one of the imperial villas. For more than 1,000 years, from 794 to 1868, Kyoto was Japan's capital, though at times only in name. From 794 to the end of the 12th century, the city flourished. Japan's culture started to grow independent of Chinese influences and to develop its unique characteristics. Unfortunately, the use of wood for construction, coupled with Japan's two primordial enemies, fire and earthquakes, has destroyed all the buildings from this era, except Byodo-in in Uji. The short life span of a building in the 11th century is exemplified by the Imperial Palace, which burned down 14 times in 122 years. Much of what you see in Kyoto today dates from the first half of the 17th century. But such was Kyoto's decline in the 17th and 18th centuries that when the power of the government was returned from the shoguns to the emperor, he moved his capital and imperial court to Edo, renaming it Tokyo. Though that move may have pained Kyoto residents, it actually saved the city from destruction. While most major cities in Japan were bombed flat in World War II, Kyoto survived. And where old quarters of Tokyo have been replaced with characterless modern buildings -- a fate that Kyoto has shared in part -- much of the city's wooden architecture of the past still stands.