Kyoto, Japan
Temple Traffic Jam
"A Thousand Shrines, One Bus Route"
Official Coat of Arms
A shield bearing a single vermillion torii gate crammed with tourists queuing three deep, beneath a crossed pair of chopsticks and a city bus permanently displaying 'FULL'. The motto beneath reads 'Sixteen Hundred Temples, Zero Parking'.
TripAdvisor Review
★★★★☆ 4/5
"Fushimi Inari at dawn was genuinely magical, then I turned a corner and found 400 tour groups had the same idea. The buses are so packed you develop a spiritual connection to strangers' armpits before you ever reach a temple. Kinkaku-ji is stunning for the 45 seconds before someone's selfie stick takes out your eye. Still, the tofu was excellent and I forgive the city almost everything."— BarryFromBrisbaneDoesAsia
Property Listing
Charming machiya townhouse in Japan's spiritual heartland, offering unrivalled proximity to over a thousand UNESCO-adjacent temples and the gentle, ambient hum of tour buses idling outside your window at 7am. Rare chance to live somewhere so historic that renovating your own kitchen requires a permit from three different cultural preservation boards.
Twinned With
Venice — Both are irreplaceable historic treasures being slowly loved to death by people wielding selfie sticks.
Supporting Evidence
Kyoto has over 1,600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines, meaning the city has more sacred sites than it has convenient places to sit down and rest your feet.