Kyoto

November in Kyoto is the peak of the peak and everyone knows it. The famous temples in the afternoon are not an experience, they are a queue with a view at the end of it.

The fix is boring and completely effective: be somewhere at seven in the morning. We had Nanzen-ji almost to ourselves, mist still sitting in the aqueduct arches, and a groundskeeper raking gravel in a way that made me feel deeply unserious about my own work.

The gardens that stayed with me were the small ones. A temple in the north with no queue at all, where the entire composition was moss, three rocks, and the wall of a hillside. I sat on the boards for an hour. I do not think I have concentrated that hard on anything in years.

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