Experiences of a series of seismic explorations conducted in Kyoto and its environs for investigating subsurface structures up to 1 km are summarized and discussed. Examples of explorations using power spectra or phase velocities of microtremors, the refraction method of various scales, the classical reflection method with the ray-tracing analysis, and the CDP method as well as a newly devised pseudo-reflection profiling (PRP) method are presented. The amount of labor and attainable resolution of the above methods are compared. The PRP method is efficient, since this is fairly high in resolution and can be applied for a wide area with relatively little effort. © 1992, The Seismological Society of Japan, The Volcanological Society of Japan, The Geodetic Society of Japan. All rights reserved.