1 January …. Kyoto
After a super long few days of travel, we’d gone to bed pretty early on New Years Eve and everyone slept until after 8am on the 1st. I think we were tired! In our exhausted state upon arriving into Kyoto, we hadn’t got around to procuring breakfast items yet. So we headed to the Family Mart, a whole 100m away, to pick up some breakfast treats. The kids love a convenience store and we had plenty of konbini meals in our 3 weeks in Japan. On our 2 day stop-over in Tokyo in 2024 it was a novelty, and we were wondering it the attraction would wear off on this longer trip. I’ve never been a fan of onigiri for breakfast and opted for pastries and coffee but the kids were into the onigiri and croquette.
It was a cool 3 degrees, a bit of a change from an Aussie Summer and the heat and humidity of Fiji, so coats and gloves were on, but luckily the sun was shining. Ready to walk off any remaining jet-lag we headed into Yamashina station, where it was predictably quite busy.
We were staying in Yamashina, which is 1 stop into the much larger Kyoto Station. As it was New Year’s holidays, and most Japanese were on leave it was rather busy everywhere.
Kyoto Sky Garden
While we were trying to find the correct trains and buses for our morning agenda, we saw signs for the Kyoto Station Sky-garden that we were planning to visit later in the day, so up we went.
It’s an impressive amount of stairs and escalators up but the views of both the station and over Kyoto are excellent. Zinnia had way too much energy, and ran up and down the stairs a million times!
Up the top of the sky garden it was incredibly windy but you couldn’t beat the views over Kyoto city.
The rooftop garden was quiet and peaceful, aside from Zinnia and Soren running all over the place trying to burn off their breakfast.
The kids were happy to run down the stair rather than take the many escalators. This is how we all rack up 30,000 steps every day! Kyoto Station is quite modern and it’s easy to navigate. We did spend quite a bit of time here in our few days in Kyoto.
The plan for the morning was to hit up a few of the tourist hotspots, the first of which was Kiyomizu-dera Buddhist temple. With the holidays, the train and bus schedules were a bit altered but we did eventually find a JR train that connected us to a busy, but very orderly, bus to the Eastern part of Kyoto where the temple is located.
Kiyomizu-dera Temple
We were soon in some very pretty (but busy) cobbled streets to see the Kiyomizu-dera Hillside temple. This is one of the most instagramed spots in Kyoto, so there were no quiet streets here, but it was definitely pretty.
There were plenty of tourists, and plenty of shops to find things we liked……… or had to talk the kids out of buying! Some pocket money was spent pretty quickly though and the adults also found a lot things that we wanted to take home.
We admired the many kimonos and loved watching people wandering the streets in their kimonos after having their hair and makeup done. Soren was also a big fan of watching the rickshaws pick their way through the crowds.
The temple was pretty but wandering through the stores on the cobbled streets was probably the most fun.
The pedestrian streets are preserved from the Edo-era (but now rather touristy). The sloped cobblestone streets have plenty of wooden houses, teahouses and merchant shops. The Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka slopes are steep little streets, and were OK on foot but we were glad we weren’t pulling a rickshaw.
Otani Sobyo Temple and Yasaka Shrine
After Soren spent a lot of his pocket money on a One Piece figurine he found in a tiny shop in an alley (and turned out to be an excellent buy) we made our way to towards the Yasaka Shrine…….. while we had any money left. On the way we found a path leading up to the Otani Sobyo temple and mausoleum and looked around pretty gardens.
This is another Buddhist temple and contains one of the largest Buddhist graveyards in the city.
It was then a short walk to the Yasaka Shrine and the famous 5 story pagoda. It was incredibly busy, being New Year’s. We weren’t planning on going inside the shrine, which was lucky as the wait was probably several hours. It was certainly a lively atmosphere!
The Yasaka Shrine is in the Gion district and is a Shinto shrine which is famous as the birthplace of Gion Matsuri. There is a festival of the same name held here in July. Today it was full of people visiting for the New Year.
The Gion District and Nishki Market
After deciding we definitely were happy with observing the shrine and crowds from the outside, we then walked down through the Gion district, which was again teeming with people. The Gion district is Kyoto’s most famous geisha district and is located between the Yasaka Shrine and the Kamo River.
There are plenty of exclusive restaurants in this district, but we were on the lookout for something a little cheaper, and vegetarian friendly, for lunch, so decided to head to the nearby Nishki market. We did cross over the Kamo River which was definitely not the prettiest river I have ever seen!
We had a wander through the Nishki market which had many interesting food stalls. After a lot of walking and ‘touristing’ during the morning, we were all getting a bit ‘hangry’ by now and no one could agree on what to eat. Everywhere was busy with long lines and a lack vegetarian friendly options. It was well into the afternoon and those morning convenience store breakfast items has well and truly been burnt off. In the end we found a street vendor just outside the market and picked up some steamed buns and rice and veggies and ate in a nearby park.
The kids had a play while Anto procured himself extra food and coffee. It had warmed up to about 5 degrees, and having ticked off most of the days agenda for the day we thought we head over to the Golden Pavilion as it wasn’t near anything else we wanted to do on other days, but we definitely wanted to see it. This was on my ‘must see’ list for Kyoto and it was a bit out of the way, but by golly was it worth it.
The Golden Pavilion
After a train and then another bus we arrived at the Golden Pavilion complex a bit after 4pm, and there were plenty of people streaming into and out of the area.
Despite the throngs of tourists the tickets alone (on rice paper with beautiful lettering) were probably worth the entry fee. The light on a cold Winter afternoon was stunning.
The Golden Pavilion is actually called Kinkaku-ji, or Rokuon-ji. It is a Zen Buddhist temple, a designated World Heritage site and one of the 17 historic monuments of ancient Kyoto.
We all admired the beautifully manicured gardens in the moat, and wondered how often they rowed out to trim the trees.
It might have been our 4th Kyoto temple of the day but they had all been different and we definitely were enjoying the very Japanese landscapes. It was a special way to kick off the New Year!
Despite it being the depths of Winter the gardens were beautiful. I would love to come back in other seasons to see it with either Autumn colour or cherry blossoms!
As is typical at Japanese temples and shrines, people were tossing coins for good luck, and tying omikuji (fortune telling paper strips).
It was rapidly starting to get dark and cold but we were all enjoying these stunning views.
We’d seen the lines for the return bus when we got off, and sure enough it hadn’t gotten better. The 40 minute bus back to Kyoto station was rather squishy. I’m not sure how they fitted that many people on a bus! There was no moving, and you could barely breathe let alone see where we’d all ended up as people moved around between stops. We didn’t lose any kids though, and there might have been some impromptu napping from a couple of them on the bus back to Kyoto Station.
A dinner at Kyoto Station
We were treated to Kyoto Tower lit up as we pulled into the station, as it was now dark.
Having only eaten konbini food for our entire time in Japan thus far, we decided to find a restaurant in one of the many dining precincts in the station shopping centres. Everywhere had lines but we found somewhere where didn’t have to wait too long.
The kids and Anto got some giant meal sets, and I found at least some rice and green veggies I could eat and we all had various forms of yuzu drinks. The meal was pretty good and sitting down and resting our tired feet was appreciated.
All tired from a big day exploring Kyoto, it was a quick train back to our warm apartment in Yamashina. As we did the short walk from Yamashina station to our Airbnb we were glad we’d already eaten as most of the shops here were again closed early for the holidays.
We’d all clocked up over 20,000 steps and Zinnia 30,000. It had been an excellent day of sightseeing in Kyoto and a great way to kick off 2026, but we were definitely ready for a good nights sleep before a trip out to Nara the next day.
Up next….
Nara, with it’s beautiful historical sites, and of course many deer! We had a wonderful time with the deer and a fabulous okonomiyaki lunch. No children were either burnt from open hotplates at lunch nor butted to death by the deer 😉
