I've visited Kyoto a dozen times, yet each trip reveals something new. On this journey, I made a conscious decision to avoid the major attractions and instead seek out the temples that locals cherish but tourists rarely find.
My search led me to Shisen-do, a 17th-century retreat built by a samurai-turned-poet. The temple's dry landscape garden, designed to be viewed from the wooden veranda, captures the essence of Japanese aesthetics—simple, profound, and deeply connected to nature.
The zen garden at Shisen-do temple, where raked gravel represents water flowing around islands of moss and stone.
Marcus Chen
Unlike the crowded paths of more famous sites, here I sat alone for an hour, watching autumn leaves drift onto the raked gravel. The only sounds were birdsong and the periodic "shishi-odoshi"—a bamboo water feature that punctuates the silence with a hollow knock.
Autumn maple leaves carpet the ground at a quiet temple in Kyoto's northern Higashiyama district.
Marcus Chen
This is the Kyoto that exists beyond the guidebooks, waiting for those willing to wander off the well-worn paths and embrace the unexpected.