Pretending It’s Not Crowded in Kyoto, Japan

Kyoto, formerly Japan’s capital city, is known for being the cultural heart of Japan. Whereas Tokyo is the epitome of modern Japanese life, Kyoto represents the country’s history and tradition.

It’s also an extremely popular tourist destination, especially during cherry blossom season.

There’s a funny impulse among tourists, while photographing all the beautiful shrines and temples, to try to create the illusion of being the only visitor. As a result, travel photos of Kyoto often paint a rather unrealistic picture of what the city is like experientially, especially at the more popular attractions.

Naturally, we ran around Kyoto trying to paint the exact same illusion.

We kicked off our first day with a visit to Kiyomizudera: a famous Buddhist temple that was originally founded in 778, and constructed without the use of any nails.

It was raining heavily on the morning that we visited, so the temple wasn’t as busy as usual. The bus tour groups were largely clustered around the main viewpoint, so we were able to explore a lot of the temple grounds in a relaxed way.

The other really popular attraction we wanted to see in Kyoto was the Fushimi Inari Taisha: a shrine with a row of about 800 torii gates leading up a mountain trail.

On the advice of a travel blogger, we set a 5am alarm in the hopes of enjoying Fushimi Inari without the crowds.

This worked reasonably well. Many other travelers had clearly gotten the same memo, so I wouldn’t call the temple grounds unbusy even in the early morning. But, look at what the hiking path was like at 6:30am (left), versus 8am (right).

The final thing we were really excited about in Kyoto were the cherry blossoms. Here, we had no trouble with crowds because (fortunately/unfortunately) we were a few days too early for the blossoming peak. The few trees we did find that had decided to bloom early, we had largely to ourselves.

Well, not *entirely* to ourselves.

We also visited some other shrines and parks that are not on any Kyoto top 10 lists. As you might expect, these places were virtually crowd free. It was a lot easier to feel the spirituality of the holy sites that had fewer tourists. At one temple, we even got to witness a group of monks chanting (not pictured of course).

Overall, Kyoto is a stunning city with so much to offer. And even if you don’t like crowds, you can still have a good time here. You may just have to jump through a few extra hoops to avoid them.