Saihoji (Kokedera)

Around 120 species of moss cover the ground of this garden, and the standard story is that Muso Soseki designed it that way in 1339. He did not. He laid out a conventional pond garden with white sand and raked gravel; the temple then fell into poverty and neglect, the site flooded repeatedly, and over centuries the moss arrived on its own and took everything. What is now the most carefully protected garden in Kyoto began as an accident of abandonment.

Getting in takes planning. Visitor numbers are capped, entry is by advance booking through the temple's website, and the fee is around 4,000 yen, which is several times any other temple in the city. There is also no wandering straight into the garden: everyone first sits in the main hall and copies out a sutra with brush and ink, or traces it, before the garden opens to them. It takes twenty minutes or so and it is not optional. Most people find it changes how they then look at the moss.

The garden itself is two levels. Below is the pond in the shape of the character for heart, ringed by a circuit path under maples, with moss running to the water's edge in low green hummocks. Above is a dry rock arrangement, one of the earliest of its kind and the ancestor of every karesansui garden that followed.

Go on a wet day or just after rain. The moss is dull and grey when dry and luminous when soaked, and the difference is not subtle. Deep in summer, and again in November, are the best months.