Kiosk Hello

Out of the many tem­ples in Kyoto these were my favorites, we vis­ited them in the Fall, (caught the peak Fall leaf period by sheer luck) keep in mind the Spring can be a totally dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence, if anyone has other tem­ples they like please put them in the com­ments here. We’d really love to hear from you. I do not put the addresses here are they are all well marked on any Kyoto map, damn read­ing my list now, help! I want to go!

ryoanji:
mother of zen gar­dens, how can you miss it? I never GOT zen gar­dens until I walked in here, artis­ti­cally life chang­ing expe­ri­ence
kat­sura:
impe­r­ial temple slightly out­side of town, really lovely, you must get ticket from the impe­r­ial palace in the center of town in order to go there, slightly removed from hustle of other tem­ples
ginkakuji:
lovely sand pile rep­re­sent­ing mt fuji, this is one place to go to in the Fall, the leaves were incredible…
kinkakuji:
this is where the golden temple is, much to be appre­ci­ated but we liked ginkakuji more if you can only go to one
zuiho-​in & koto-​in:
both are sub­tem­ples of the Daitokuji Temple
Zuiho-​in has a out­stand­ing rock and moss garden, small, lovely and inti­mate and Koto-​in has an impres­sively silent entrance and an amaz­ing view­ing garden
kiy­omizu:
inter­est­ing, mas­sive con­struc­tion up the hill, very dif­fer­ent from the rest on this list, more for the con­struc­tion than the nature