Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion Temple) and Ryoanji

On my last morning — where, according to one sign, it was 40°C — I managed a couple of excursions before my flight homeward. My first port of call, and priority for the morning, was the Kinkaku-ji Temple (officially called Rokuon-ji), site of the famous golden temple. The highlight of the trip is actually the first vantage point on the edge of the lake, looking across to the gold-coloured pavilion on the other side. It’s a great view … you just have to dodge all the tourists getting in each other’s way trying to take photographs.

As you can see from the photos, the gardens are quite lovely, and provided some welcome shade as I wandered around the area.

I decided I had enough time and energy to visit another nearby site: the Ryoanji Temple, with its famed white pebble and rock “island” Zen garden. This was quite intriguing, but actually less spectacular than I had imagined (the site is only 25m x 10m, and rectangular, despite the misleading curves produced by doing a panorama in the first photo below).

Inside the adjacent building there were murals on the walls.

A curious feature of many of the sites I have visited is the presence of water-filled red fire-buckets, since so many of the structures are made of wood.

The rest of the gardens were beautiful, and the trees gave lovely framed views of the lake, so it was a nice way to end the trip before heading out to the airport and the long trip home.