KKyoto

I was looking back on pics from my trip to Kyoto in March 2020 and it looks completely different from everything I have seen in the past year

  • April 7, 2024

I heard rumors that the city was kinda empty and they were right.

by FlanThief

30 comments

  2. Yeah, the pandemic was wild here.

    I walked around a completely empty arashiyama.

    I have so many pics of me clowning/full on lying down in areas that are packed to the gills now.

  3. Yeah I was Kinkaku-ji and it was deserted apart from the maintenance workers. Amazing. This was back in 2022 too.

  5. We arrived in Kyoto from China in March 2022 and spent three months with almost no one around. The only tour groups were kids on school excursions. We feel so fortunate now to have been able to have spent that time there.

  9. That’s what it looked like when I was living there, long before the tourism boom and anyone who didn’t even know anything about Japan visited.

  10. I’ve got a selfie from March 2021 on the Kiyomizu-dera stage… Alone. What a lovely city when the crowds are away.

  13. If I could have chosen anywhere in the world to be during a lockdown I think I still would have chosen Kyoto. We’ll probably never see it like that again.

  16. took the chance to visit in ‘20, ‘21, ‘22, and early ‘23…. It was an amazing and magical.

    I love Kyoto but was on a self imposed boycott since my earlier trip in the early 2010s as I felt it was getting too crowded already then, and I don’t know when will be my next visit given the current conditions…

  17. You went at the best time, right at the beginning of the pandemic. I don’t know what is surprising?

  19. Yeah, over tourism happening in Kyoto. Feel bad for the locals. Some of my students complained that they couldn’t get a bus due to all the tourists with their luggage in them.

  22. My working holiday began exactly in March 2020, just a few weeks before the borders closed. It was both a sad and nice year for various reason (no events, but also no tourist groups). Went back home in March ’21, and after 3 years I’m now back as tourist.
    Man, it’s wild.

  24. I once went to Kiyomizu-dera solo on 11/23 with 0 clue it was a holiday 😅

  26. I was just there a couple weeks ago and it’s still this empty until like 8 or 9am. And I was just up for the weekend. I’m guessing weekdays are a little less crowded too. But yeah by 10 it’s packed everywhere

  27. My wife and I worked from my in-law’s house for a couple of weeks in 2020, it was amazing. We visited Kiyomizu and were literally the only people in the entire temple outside of staff! I don’t think I will ever experience that again.

  30. I went in September 2022 and this is what it looked like. I even went to Hiroshima and there were much less people

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