Very Important Moss

The following day my host sister and host mother took Dad, my friend and me around to a couple famous places in Kyoto. The first stop was the golden temple again, where Dad got a coin into the bowl in only one shot, and then on to Ryoanji which was close by. Ryoanji has beautiful grounds, but it’s most famous for its rock garden (an area of carefully placed stones amid raked gravel). The rock garden has about 15 stones in it, but they are positioned such that you can only ever see 14 at a time, with one always hidden by one of the others. It’s pretty nifty. In addition, the back wall of the garden is tapered towards the corner, creating the illusion of a larger space. The grounds themselves are very calming, and undoubtedly stunning in the spring, when the massive wisteria trellis and rows of cherry trees would be in bloom. From there we went to the Silver Temple, Ginkakuji, the sister temple to the Gold Temple, Kinkakuji. While Kinkakuji is located under one of the mountains around Kyoto on which the Chinese character for ‘big’ is burned every summer, Ginkakuji is under the other character for ‘big’, and was meant to be covered in silver to strengthen the comparison. Unfortunately, a war broke out before Ginkakuji could be finished, so even though it is called the ‘Silver Temple’ it is actually made of wood. While the building itself is rather unremarkable, the gardens surrounding it are truly lovely, and include sculpted white sand flows and winding manicured rivers winding down the mountainside, which is in turn covered in green mosses and trees. Apparently there are mosses in the garden specific to the area or rare that are threatened by invasive species of mosses from other locations. After this temple we attempted to get across town to Sanjusangendo, but did not make it in part due to the heavy traffic and in part due to the fact that the temple closed early. Instead we had tea and tarts at the neighbouring Hyatt and returned to the hotel.
-Kinkakuji may be more immediately impressive, but I found Ginkakuji to be more beautiful overall.
-At Ginkakuji there were samples of mosses for the purpose of pointing out the different species present on the temple grounds. The label for the native mosses was ‘Very Important Moss (Like VIP)’, but the one for the invasive species was ‘Moss the Interrupter’, which I think should be the name of a super villain.
-They have samples of this wonderful plum and shiso tea at Ryoanji that is tart and thankfully quite warm.