The guidebooks make no attempt to sugarcoat it: The Japanese may do a great job of preserving the artifacts of their rich cultural heritage, but they're not so great at preserving its spirit. Step outside the gates of Kyoto's most beautiful hallowed grounds, and you're right back in the sea of dirty concrete, brown metal railings and crisscrossing power-lines that define the modern Japanese landscape. The grandeur, the austerity, the resonance of Kyoto's sacred places—they've all been left behind in the country's race for modernization.
The street that runs past Kinkaku-ji.
Books like Dogs & Demons wallow in despair at what has been lost, but I tend to believe that this is just another round in Japan's repeated cycle of isolation followed by semi-voluntary internationalism. Japan has survived and flourished each time; no doubt their renaissance will come again. Perhaps this is one of the functions these magnificent temples serve: to remind the Japanese of their potential.
If Kinkaku-ji is famous for its gleaming exterior, then Ryoan-ji is surely just as famous for its inner beauty, as it houses the most famous Zen rock garden in the world. Nearly 100 feet wide, the garden consists of 15 stones in a bed of white gravel which is raked every morning. One of its most amazing features is that the rocks have been arranged in such a way that only 14 of them can be viewed from any vantage point.
All photos of the rock garden look exactly like this one. This is the only spot where you can photograph it.
A view from outside the nearby teahouse.
Folks, I have a confession to make. The garden just didn't do much for me. It's not the rocks' fault. Other visitors have been humbled to the core by this place, but I was freezing, tired and a little templed out after taking 80 photos of Kinkaku-ji. More to the point, the garden was so crowded with tourists that there was literally nowhere I could sit—these just weren't the right conditions for enlightenment. But that's okay. When I come back, the garden will still be there, waiting.