Last Updated: Mar 20, 2024

Uji & Daigo-ji

A Pair of Attractions in Southeastern Kyoto

This story was originally published on donnykimball.com and has been syndicated here on Medium

“While this article was originally written during the pandemic, all of the locations and information featured are still valid…”

— Donny Kimball

Over the years, I’ve been quite wary of visiting Japan’s former capital. Simply put, the place has been overrun with tourists for the past few years to the point where it had become akin to Disneyland. In fact, it was so bad that the very charm that makes Kyoto appealing in the first place had largely vanished. Alas, one silver lining of the coronavirus pandemic for residents of Japan has been that Kyoto has briefly returned to the bygone days prior to the inbound tourism boom. With draconian locks on Japan’s borders for the time being, the legions of visitors that had become commonplace are noticeably lacking.

Seeing as I am located in Japan, and have been able to take advantage of the lull in tourism, I’ve been trying to cross off many of the spots in Kyoto that remained on my bucket list. With the promise of a vaccine and the potential return of tourism now on the horizon, I recently elected to put a pause on visiting new cities and instead return to Kyoto to…