Kyoto’s Higashiyama district may be jam-packed with countless temples and shrines, but in terms of aesthetic difference, the Ryozen Kannon Temple is quite literally head and shoulders above the rest. Sharing a carpark with Kodaiji Temple—my intended destination—I mistakenly walked toward the...
Not far from Kyoto’s Fushimi Inari Taisha lies the temple famously home to 1001 statues of Kannon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. Its name—Sanjusangendo— however, refers to an old method of measurement, literally translating to ‘hall with 33 spaces between columns’.