Before leaving for Tokyo, we spent the morning sightseeing, at the Golden Pavilion and the Zen Garden.  Rokuon-ji Temple is known as the Golden Pavilion, or Kinkaku, because it has a Pavilion which is golden. Not fake gold either, some shogun went all out when designing his retirement home, and used actual thin sheets of gold on the outer walls.




Now his will apparently stipulated that there should be a Zen temple there upon his death, so I got to see my first Zen garden. I stared at “15 rocks expertly laid out on white gravel” for 15 minutes, and maybe I would have gotten a taste of the infinite teachings if it had been slightly more quiet, but they were doing construction that day (restoration), so there was banging, which they of course apologized for.



This miniature model of the zen garden may be more useful in giving a full picture of what it looked like.

Then we went through more gardens, still part of the same property. I missed the Nara deer but there were cute duckies instead.
 



  
So that was it for Kyoto. It has a lot of amazing historical stuff, but the city itself is not so charming. Still, I enjoyed my time there.