One of my favourite temples in Kyoto is Konchi-In temple. Kyoto tends to be very busy with crowded buses and lots of tourists everywhere. Only around the corner from Konchi-In is Nanzen-ji temple. There are buses parked down the street and tourists queuing to get in there. Konchi-In is very quiet. I think that everybody just walks past it oblivious to what is inside. It isn’t particularly big but has a really nice zen garden by the main temple and a nice pond near the entrance. This is the pond.

It’s hard to get a good photo of the zen garden as it’s quite wide. This is part of it. This is called Crane Island.

Despite the masses of traffic in Kyoto it is very quiet. There are very small man made hills around the garden that help to eliminate the noise of the outside world. Whenever I visit Kyoto I try and make a visit and spend half an hour or so siting on the temple steps in the peace and quiet while enjoying the garden.