Daisen-in Temple

Praying Jizu
Temple
Rock Garden
The last temple that we had in our plan to visit before going to the train station was Daisen-in Temple. It was, of course, just one temple that was part of a larger complex of many temples and shrines. Apparently this temple is famous for its rock garden. When we got to the gate, we expected that we would have to pay. However, we did not expect to be told that we would not be able to take photos of the rock garden, or of anything else in the temple. What surprised us even more was that didn’t even allow people to go in and draw or sketch anything within the temple. I thought that was absurd, so we left. Since we were already tired, this only bothered us more, and so we decided that it wouldn’t be worth it to pay to go in and see it. Like I said, we were already tired, so this was the perfect excuse to cut it short and head to the train station.

On our way out of the temple grounds, we saw another small temple, and they allowed us to take photos, so we went in there instead. The experience was very pleasant since, at the end of the day, we were the only ones who were inside the temple, and we felt like we could do whatever we wanted (except that there was a guy who kept following us, probably making sure that we didn’t spit on the Buddha, or whatever). It was a rather small temple, and actually felt like it was a house. Paola and I decided that after we buy our first house, we will raze it to the ground, and rebuild it with the same design and layout as this temple.

After that, we jumped on the first bus that we saw that said it would take us to the train station. From there, we waited about five minutes, just enough time to buy some meals for the ride, and jumped on the train back to Tokyo.