Why Early Mornings Change Kyoto Completely
Travellers come home from Kyoto with one of two reports. Either it was serene and extraordinary, or it was a queue with a temple at the end. The difference is almost always the clock.
6 min read
The numbers behind it
Most Kyoto visitors are staying in hotels and following guidebook opening times, which means arrivals cluster between 09:30 and 11:00. Coach groups add to that, and they rarely start before 09:00.
Many temples open between 06:00 and 08:00. Fushimi Inari and the outer paths at Kiyomizu-dera are open at all hours. That gives you a window of one to two hours with a fraction of the people.
Which sites benefit most
The narrow ones. Anywhere the route is a lane, a corridor or a path, crowding matters much more than in an open courtyard.
Fushimi Inari's torii tunnels, the Higashiyama lanes leading to Kiyomizu, the Arashiyama bamboo grove and the moss paths at Gio-ji are all transformed by an early start.
- Fushimi Inari: arrive by 07:00 and walk beyond the first two gate tunnels
- Arashiyama bamboo grove: 07:30 at the latest, it is unpleasant by 10:00
- Kiyomizu-dera: opens at 06:00, which is unusually early even for Kyoto
- Nanzen-ji and the Philosopher's Path: quiet until mid morning
How to make it survivable
Build the rest of the day around it. An early start only works if the afternoon is genuinely free, so plan a long lunch and a rest between 13:00 and 16:00.
Stay somewhere with a convenience store nearby for breakfast, because hotel breakfast usually begins after you need to leave. A coffee and an onigiri at 06:40 is a perfectly good Kyoto breakfast.
Late afternoon is the second window
Groups leave by 16:00. Between 16:30 and closing, many temples are calm again and the light is much better for photographs.
Fushimi Inari works particularly well in the early evening, since the lower gates are lit and the path higher up empties out almost entirely.
