Day Trips from Kyoto: Nara, Uji and Osaka

Kyoto is superbly placed for the day trip. Within an hour by train lie three quite different excursions: Nara, Japan’s capital before Kyoto and home to a colossal bronze Buddha and a deer-filled park; Uji, a small riverside town that is the spiritual home of Japanese green tea and holds one of the country’s most beautiful temples; and Osaka, the brash, warm-hearted port city famous above all for its food.

If a Kyoto stay allows one day away from the city’s own temples, the question is simply which suits you — the deep antiquity of Nara, the gentle tea-and-temple calm of Uji, or the energy and eating of Osaka. This article sets out each, with the practicalities, so the choice is an easy one.

Nara: Japan's first great capital

Nara was Japan’s capital in the eighth century, before the seat of power moved to Kyoto, and that brief golden age left monuments of the first rank. Tōdai-ji houses the Great Buddha, a bronze image some fifteen metres high, in a vast wooden hall long counted among the largest timber buildings in the world. Nearby, the Kasuga Taisha shrine is famous for its thousands of bronze and stone lanterns, and the temple of Kōfuku-ji for its elegant five-storey pagoda.

These sites, with the surrounding Nara Park, form part of a UNESCO World Heritage listing. The park itself is the other draw: more than a thousand wild sika deer roam it freely, regarded as sacred messengers and entirely used to people — vendors sell special crackers to feed them, though the deer can be insistent, so hold food lightly and mind small children. Nara is about forty-five minutes from Kyoto by train, and a single unhurried day covers it comfortably.

Uji: green tea and a temple on a coin

Uji lies between Kyoto and Nara, a short train ride south, and rewards a quieter, gentler day. It is Japan’s most celebrated source of green tea — the matcha that supplies Kyoto’s tea ceremonies and finest sweets — and its main street is lined with old tea houses where you can taste, buy, and watch the leaf being stone-ground. A bowl of properly whisked Uji matcha, taken slowly, is the town’s defining pleasure.

Uji’s other treasure is Byōdō-in, an eleventh-century temple whose Phoenix Hall, reflected in its pond, is so emblematic of Japan that it appears on the ten-yen coin. The town is also bound up with classical literature: the final chapters of The Tale of Genji, the great eleventh-century novel, are set here, and a museum is devoted to them. Uji pairs naturally with Nara, or stands on its own as a calm half- to full-day escape.

Osaka: Japan's kitchen

Osaka is the counterweight to Kyoto’s restraint — a large, fast, famously friendly city whose reputation rests above all on food. The phrase kuidaore, roughly “eat yourself broke,” is the city’s own, and the Dōtonbori district, with its canal, its glittering signs and its street stalls, is the heart of it. Osaka’s signatures are takoyaki, the savoury octopus balls, and okonomiyaki, a hearty griddled pancake — both best eaten standing, from a stall or counter.

There is sightseeing too — the reconstructed Osaka Castle in its broad park, the historic Shitennō-ji temple, the views from the Umeda Sky Building — but Osaka is honestly at its best treated as an evening city. It is only about fifteen minutes from Kyoto by fast train, which makes it ideal for a late-afternoon arrival, a long grazing dinner around Dōtonbori, and a relaxed train back.

Choosing your day, and the practicalities

All three are easy. Nara and Osaka are roughly fifteen to fifty minutes from Kyoto depending on the train and line; Uji is a short ride on the JR or Keihan line. Trains are frequent, fast and punctual, and no advance planning beyond turning up at the station is really needed.

Match the trip to your mood. Choose Nara for monumental history and the deer; Uji for tea, a sublime temple and literary quiet; Osaka for energy and an evening of eating. Nara and Uji combine well into a single full day, since the line runs through both. Osaka, being so close and so much an after-dark city, slots neatly into a late afternoon and evening without sacrificing a Kyoto day at all.

Day trips on The Long Way East

The Kyoto and Arashiyama chapter of The Long Way East is built with room for one of these excursions, so that the Kansai region is felt as the connected old heartland it is rather than as Kyoto alone. Nara is the usual choice — the natural complement to Kyoto, an older capital whose monuments deepen the understanding of what came after.

Travellers with a particular interest can ask to weight the days differently: a tea-focused visitor toward Uji, a food-minded one toward an Osaka evening. The principle, as everywhere on the journey, is the slow one — one excursion done well and unhurried, rather than three crammed into a tiring week.