Kyoto has become so congested with tourists that organizers of school trips are opting to stay away from the ancient capital.
Visiting students have found themselves learning more about crowds and transportation delays than about the history and culture of Kyoto.
The city remains the top destination for junior high school excursions, but there are signs this could change.
The Toshima Ward-run Nishi-Ikebukuro Junior High School in Tokyo picked the Shikoku region as the destination for its school trip in next academic year after an aggravating excursion to Kyoto.
On the third day of the school trip in September last year, students were split into groups and given “free time” to take buses and trains to temples and shrines across Kyoto.
But they spent much of the time stuck in traffic in the crowded city. Many groups could only visit about half of the sites on their itineraries.
One group gave up on taking a bus near Kinkakuji temple because the bus stop was so heavily congested.
Wary of the meeting time with other groups, the students skipped Kitano Tenmangu shrine and other sites and walked about 13 kilometers to Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine, their final destination.
“The teacher accompanying the group was exhausted,” Takashi Yahiro, the school’s principal, recalled. “Each group called in to say that they would skip some sites they had planned to visit because they didn’t have enough time.”
The school consulted a travel agency and changed the next school trip destination from Kyoto and Nara to Shikoku. The main island west of Kyoto offers various experience-based programs, such as cooking “katsuo no tataki” (fresh skipjack tuna seared over a straw fire) in Kochi Prefecture and preparing “udon” thick noodles in Kagawa Prefecture.
“We always wanted them to experience making something with their own hands,” Yahiro said. “In Kochi, they can also learn about the history of the closing days of Japan’s feudal times.”
The school explained the change at a parent meeting in April and met with no objection.
A 47-year-old woman whose daughter is a second-year student at the school said she was concerned by news reports about overtourism in Kyoto.
“It makes me worry about her health if she has to wait for a long time to get on a bus or enter a site in hot temperatures,” the mother said. “Neither I nor my daughter have visited Shikoku. I heard there are many experience-based programs, and I think she can spend quality time there.”
One student said anywhere is good as long as she is with her friends.
Another student said he is looking forward to going to Shikoku because he has never been there.
NEW HOT SPOTS
According to a 2024 tourism survey compiled by the Kyoto municipal government, the city welcomed 56.06 million visitors that year, the second-highest figure on record after 2015, when 56.84 million tourists visited.
The number of students who visited Kyoto on school trips in 2024 was 750,000, down by 7.4 percent from 810,000 in 2023 while remaining on a par with 2022.
The city government’s Tourism MICE Promotion Office said one of the reasons for the decrease is that schools have taken more trips overseas since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, an official said, “We also hear that some of them are staying away from Kyoto because there are too many tourists.”
According to a survey conducted by the Tokyo-based Japan School Trip Association, Kyoto was the most popular destination for school excursions among junior high schoolers for seven straight years between the 2018 and 2024 academic years, while Nara ranked second during the same period.
Association President Shuichi Takeuchi said Kyoto has an overwhelming presence as a school trip destination because of its history and culture.
But he added that students are currently unable to participate in activities as they used to.
Because schools decide their excursion destinations 18 months or two years beforehand, more schools could shy away from Kyoto.
According to Takeuchi, Kanazawa is highly valued as an alternative for schools in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
It takes almost the same amount of time to get to the Ishikawa prefectural capital on a Hokuriku Shinkansen train as it takes to go to Kyoto.
Kanazawa has many facilities where students can learn its history and culture. Tours of the famed Kenrokuen garden guided by local senior high schoolers have been popular.
Hakodate in Hokkaido is also a favorite destination for schools in the greater Tokyo area. It is a compact city with a tram system that makes it easy for students to go around in groups.
“The number of schools considering other regions is definitely growing,” said a representative of the Educational Tour Institute in Tokyo, which conducts research on school trips.
Rising expenses for transportation and accommodation, which account for 70 percent of the school trip costs, are also causing headaches for school officials.
According to a survey conducted by the Japan School Trip Association, the average cost of a domestic school trip for public schools was 61,206 yen ($413) in the 2018 academic year.
The amount increased to 67,844 yen in the 2024 academic year.
Some municipal governments have set a cap on travel expenses, while others have cut the number of overnight stays to reduce the burden on teachers.
Some say school excursions are unnecessary.
But Yahiro, the principal at the Nishi-Ikebukuro Junior High School, said, “It is necessary for students in compulsory education to develop planning and cooperative skills for their actions. And I view school trips as the final goal.”
(This article was written by Senior Staff Writer Tomoko Yamashita and Naoko Kobayashi.)
AloJapan.com