The final installment of Nanzen-ji and the last of our adventures in Kyoto.
Having waited out the pouring rain in the pond garden of Nanzen-in, we moved on to the Hojo next (方丈, head priest's living quarter).
Having waited out the pouring rain in the pond garden of Nanzen-in, we moved on to the Hojo next (方丈, head priest's living quarter).
The Hojo is famous for its gardens and its gold-painted wall-screens. Too bad the rain meant cloudy and gloomy sky when we were there. I didn't have much light to work with--no flash photography of course--so the interior photos were unfortunately dark.
Here are some of the gold-painted screens, but they're really hard to see with the room itself being so dark.
The back garden was gorgeous with its winding covered corridors.
It was still sprinkling outside at the time, and as you can see half of the corridor was wet from the down pour some 10 minutes prior. Oh, and that dangling metal thing isn't a wind chime. See what it really is. Neat huh?
Behind me on the right photo were some folks hanging out in the back corner, waiting for the light rain to stop.
Anyway, by the time we left the Hojo, the rain had stopped. So we decided to keep exploring beyond the aqueduct.
Yes, there was actually water in it!
Following the aqueduct up past Saisho-in (最勝院) and the small cemetery behind it, we headed straight for a little known temple, Oku-no-in, or Nanzen-ji Oku-no-in (南禅寺奥の院, literally Nanzen-ji's inner temple).
The way to Oku-no-in was actually kind of treacherous. After all, it'd just rained pretty darn hard. The dirt path became a mud path and the stone steps were wet and slippery. It didn't help at all that I was wearing a pair of ballet slip-on Converse, not exactly trekking gear =.=" That morning, for all we knew it was sunny and bloody hot when we were at Kiyomizu-dera.
I was really curious to follow this path and see where it'd go, but sliding my way down the mountain wasn't how I'd imagine our Kyoto trip would end.
Hubby, C., and A. went all the way up the steps, only to turn back to persuade me not to go up there as it was quite hazardous for them in their walking/running sneakers. To read about and see more photos of Oku-no-in, see here, here (in Japanese), and here (in French).
Anyway, we went back for a quick peek of Saisho-in before it closed and that was that. Read and see more photos of the temple here, here, and here, the latter two in Japanese.
On our way back to the Sanmon, hubby spotted these inscriptions on a tree and I just had to snap a photo of it.
So that's it for Kyoto adventures in August, folks. Even though this was my third time in Kyoto and hubby's second, we'll have to come back here again and again to see the many other places we'd missed.
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