The Kyoto FOMO Trap

If you spend any time on travel forums or Reddit threads about Japan, you will see the same question asked, with increasing desperation, almost weekly.

"Is [X number of] days enough to see everything Kyoto has to offer?"

I live here. The answer is no. A few days is not enough. A few years is not enough. There are neighbourhoods I haven't properly explored and I've been here long enough to stop counting. You will never see everything — and once you genuinely accept that, something rather good tends to happen.

Most people arrive in Kyoto with an optimised itinerary. Fushimi Inari. Kinkaku-ji. Arashiyama. Ginkaku-ji. Philosopher's Path. The list is usually borrowed from someone else's list, which was borrowed from someone else's, which was found on Instagram. Kyoto rewards that approach up to a point — it shows you beautiful things at every corner. But the checklist creates a kind of tunnel vision. You're always somewhere else in your head. Always calculating whether you're running on schedule.

What it doesn't leave room for is the thing that Kyoto actually does best.

There's a word gaining currency recently — JOMO. The Joy of Missing Out. I find it a bit much as a concept, but the instinct behind it is right.

The Kyoto that most visitors miss isn't far away or particularly hidden. It's right there, a few streets over from the famous one. An elderly woman tending her garden. A neighbourhood shrine with nobody in it. A coffee shop where the owner seems genuinely surprised you found it. A temple bell you hear but can't locate. (And if you sit by the river long enough, watch out for the Black Kites overhead.)

That version of the city is always there. You just have to have given up on the itinerary first.

This is partly why I started running sound walks here. For a few hours, the itinerary disappears entirely. You can't be anxious about the next stop on the list when you're absorbed in the sound of gravel shifting under someone else's feet forty metres away, or a bamboo tube filling slowly with water and tipping onto a stone.

When you look back on a trip to Kyoto, you probably won't remember the stress of the photo queue at a crowded landmark. You're more likely to remember the afternoon you spent without a plan.

Give yourself one of those. The city will meet you there.