Kyoto Without the Crowds

Kinkakuji, aka the temple of the golden pavilion, was created in the late 1300s, although the current version is a reconstruction built after a crazed monk burned down the original in the 1950s.

Having once been Japan’s capital for almost 1,000 years, Kyoto is awash with cultural heritage. Historic temples and shrines, beautifully landscaped gardens, and a host of other traditional facets make the city the perfect place to experience Japanese culture. As legendary film director Akira Kurosawa once put it: “In Kyoto, there is living history in every corner.”

All that has made Kyoto one of Asia’s top destinations. In 2023, the city—population 1.46 million—welcomed 50 million visitors. No surprise then that it’s feeling the impact of overtourism. In fact, if you were to go by a recent dialog on social media, the entire city of Kyoto is overrun with tourists, 24/7, 365 days a year.

Not quite. On a work trip to Kyoto last November—in the middle of the autumnal peak season—the gilded Kinkakuji temple in northwest Kyoto was heaving with travelers, yet other parts of the northwest were calmed. The petite gardens of the Myoshinji temple complex were all but empty, as were the grounds of nearby Ninnaji temple–a UNESCO site like Kinkakuji.

That’s Kyoto: the big-ticket attractions draw crowds and the buses serving them creak under the weight of it all. Likewise, central areas such as Shijo and Kawaramachi—both home to clusters of foreigner-friendly hotels and restaurants—have a heavy tourist feel. The main transport hub, Kyoto Station, is rarely anything other than a horde of people from around the world and around Japan, although attention tends to turn only to inbound travelers when discussing overtourism, and especially high-profile cases of non-Japanese behaving badly (tip: don’t do pullups on a sacred gate or carve your name on a UNESCO-listed shrine).

But visit Kyoto in the off-season of December to February, between the fiery maples off all and cherry blossoms of spring, and even the major sites can be quiet. That’s exactly what my teenage son and I did in December, catching the bullet train from Tokyo (our home) two hours west to Kyoto for a couple of days of sightseeing minus the crowds.

Tea, Art & Tradition

Growing up in central Tokyo, my son goes about life somewhat removed from the more traditional aspects of Japan which makes coming to a culture-soaked city like Kyoto an opportunity to connect more deeply with his Japanese heritage.

So, we began with something we’d never thought about doing together in Tokyo: matcha and sweets at Murin-an. Built in the 1890s as a private residence for statesmen Yamagata Aritomo, Murin-an features a traditional, wood-built Japanese villa with views out across a carefully landscaped garden. On the grounds is also a Western-style building that now serves as a museum—it’s supposedly here where Aritomo and other politicians hatched plans for the Russo-Japan war of 1903.

Perhaps a sign of things to come as Kyoto grapples with over-tourism, Murin-an requires advanced online bookings and limits visitors to 15 per hour, so at any time of year, it’s an oasis of calm, where as part of the admission fee we enjoyed a cup of matcha tea and a seasonal wagashi (Japanese sweet) while sat on a tatami mat floor overlooking the garden.

Caffeinated, our next stop was just north in Okazaki Park, site of Heian Jingu, a shrine built in 1895 to commemorate the 1,100th anniversary of Kyoto’s founding as Japan’s capital. While the vivid red and green buildings here are striking scale replica of the original Heian era (794-1185) imperial palace, the four gardens were equally worth a look—each representing a different style of landscaping from the previous 1,000 years.

But the surprising highlight of the park was the variety of its art and craft museums, starting with an urban art retrospective at the wonderfully curated Kyocera Museum of Art, which included work by Banksy and Kaws, before a quick look at the Japanese work at the more modest National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, and then the small but striking collection of traditional crafts at Kyoto Museum of Crafts and Design.

The Philosopher’s Path

On day two, we opt for a walk around Kyoto’s northeast, starting with a quick look at the sprawling Nanzenji Temple complex—home to a collection of Zen gardens and priceless screen door paintings—before a slow stroll along the canal-side Philosopher’s Path, a two-kilometer route that takes its name from academic Nishida Kitaro, who supposedly would wander the area in contemplation.

When the pathway is engulfed by cherry blossoms in spring, this part of Kyoto is anything but contemplative—it absolutely teems with visitors—but with the trees bare and a light chill in the air, we had the walk almost entirely to ourselves. Even when we reached the UNESCO-designated Ginkaku-ji Temple and its famed sand garden just beyond the path’s northern end, everything was calm and peaceful, just as intended when it was converted from a shogun’s retirement home into a Zen temple in1490.

The Phoenix Hall

From Ginkakuji, we took an unscripted and highly impractical detour to Uji (via Kyoto Station)in southern Kyoto, so my son could see, in person, a site everyone in Japan has held in their hands: Byodo-in, the temple on the back of the 10-yen coin.

The crowds were sparse by Uji’s usual standards, so we unhurriedly browsed the green tea shops lining the approach to the temple, picking out green tea-flavored snacks to take home as omiyage (souvenirs) for my wife, and buying a batch of freshly roasted hojicha tea leaves–given that Uji is one of Japan’s premier tea production areas, you can’t come here and not try the teas.

It’s the front-on sight of Byodo-in, however, that made this side trip so worthwhile. The way the building stretches low and wide, you can see why it’s been nicknamed the Phoenix Hall, almost appearing to rise from the pond before it like a bird readying for flight. It’s an iconic Kyoto view with which to end an almost crowd-free journey to a city that at other times of the year is struggling to cope with tourism.