Early March in Kyoto can be cold and rainy as it is today. If a place can look as beautiful and feel as bewitching under these circumstances as Kyoto did today, then you only have to long to see it under fall foliage, winter snow, and spring cherry blossoms. I have made a promise to myself to return.
A ryokan 15 minutes upriver of such comfort, style and peace…Taizo-in Temple where I had a Zen Meditation session with Monk Dayko Matsuyama followed by an extraordinary kaiseke zen vegetarian lunch…and then Golden Temple in the rain, looking fragile and beautiful, an iridescent bird of paradise holding ever so still in a storm.