Eikando Temple Garden

Eikando Temple one of the premier spots in Kyoto to admire the crimson leaves of autumn maple trees. During the peak time, the place is usually packed wall to wall with people. We visited the temple and garden three weeks before the peak time,  leave are starting to turn into orange and red. It was very a pleasant in the morning, only a few visitors around.

I had learned about Japanese gardens through a few readings before the trip. “The Elegant Garden: Architecture and Landscape of the World Finest Gardens” by Johann Krafter is one of them.

“The type of Japanese garden reaches its culmination of these Zen gardens. This is not a garden like a Western landscaped garden, where a person can walk around for days. The Japanese garden, irrespective of when it was created, is a garden of precisely framed pictures where people enter and remain silent until…