SERIES ⛩️
Venue Stories
Stories from the distinctive venues Miyako de IT has used, including temples, universities, and traditional tea-house architecture.
The Venue Stories series records each distinctive venue used by Miyako de IT in its own article. It preserves both the path by which Kyoto-specific places—temples, machiya townhouses, university campuses, the Former Assembly Hall, and soba restaurants—became available to an IT community and the experience unique to each one.
Temple venues: Butsugen-ji and Daiko-ji
Butsugen-ji, near Rokkaku Aburanokoji, has been a principal venue for Miyako de IT co-working sessions and year-end gatherings since April 2024. Opening a laptop on tatami in the main hall produces a focused setting unlike a rental space and has also been popular with international digital nomads. Daiko-ji in Fushimi-Momoyama joined as a venue partner in May 2026, creating an operational model with multiple temple venues in Kyoto.
Machiya venues: Koukando and Takahashi
Koukando is a calligraphy gallery and cafe in a renovated machiya near Karasuma-Oike, where Edo-period tableware, specialty coffee, and records share one space. Takahashi is a soba restaurant renovated from a former tea house. Machiya venues let Kyoto's cultural resources and a technology community coexist, serving a role distinct from temple venues.
University campus venues
Taisho University Kyoto Academia has been used regularly for co-working sessions, generative-AI study groups, and craft-beer events. Opening a university facility to an IT talent community is an early practical form of university-industry collaboration that is beginning to be referenced by other universities in Tokyo and Kansai.
The Former Assembly Hall
Miyako de IT has also held community events in the historic Former Assembly Hall of the Kyoto Prefectural Government Office. Opening a government facility to an IT talent community connects with our participation in the Kyoto Prefecture IT Industry Promotion Working Group and has become a symbolic example of collaboration among industry, academia, and government.
Experience design changes with every venue
Even when an event has the same name—such as a co-working session—the venue changes the participant mix, length of stay, and quality of conversation. By documenting why organizers chose each venue for each theme and what resulted, this series makes the weight of venue selection in community operations explicit.
Articles in this series: Venue Stories (2 articles)
Part 1 / 2026-02-28
Holding a Mokumoku Session at a Kyoto Temple: Creating a Place for Engineers to Focus
Part 2 / 2026-03-26
IT Study Sessions at a Temple: Continuing Mokumoku Events at Butsugenji
Other series and related pages
- 🌀 TEMPLE Model Research — A series that examines each pillar of the TEMPLE model—Theme, Environment, Members, Persistence, Local, and Evolution—distilled from 7 years and 165 events of practice.
- 🏯 Kyoto's Technology Scene — Interviews and field notes from Kyoto's IT engineers, companies, and researchers.
- 📚 Community Case Studies — A series that studies IT communities in Japan and abroad and abstracts practical lessons from an organizer's perspective.
- 🗺️ Careers for Engineers in Kyoto — A series organizing the market, salaries, career changes, and regional career strategies for IT engineers in Kyoto using official statistics and company information.
- About Miyako de IT — The principles and operating philosophy behind these series.
- What grew from Miyako de IT — Collaborations and outcomes that provide the cases explored in these series.