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The Directory › Asia › Japan › Kyoto
Plate III · i · a · The City

Kyoto

Five houses, four along one tram line, and not a famous temple among them.

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A narrow machiya street in winter, timber lattice and tiled roofs
Plate III · i · a · Higashiyama

The good houses in Kyoto are behind lattice, down a lane, with nothing on the door to tell you.

A day, properly arranged
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Not a Monday. Never the first week of January.

The entries

Four visited, one waiting on a free morning.
An empty tatami room with shoji screens and a single scroll in the alcove
Interior · the alcove, one scroll

One object, changed with the season, in a room built to make you notice it. Every collector in Europe should be made to sit here.

NOVEMBER, 9:15AM
Still on the list in Kyoto
Not yet entries. Kept here so I cannot quietly forget them.
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Notes for Kyoto

Kawai Kanjirō's house and the Raku Museum are the two that will change how you look at the rest, and they are not near each other. Give each its own half-day rather than forcing them into one; the bus across town in the middle undoes the good work.

Murin-an and Nomura are ten minutes apart at the foot of the Higashiyama, and both are best in the first hour they are open, when the garden is still wet and the coach parties are elsewhere. Nomura keeps short seasons — ring ahead or you will walk up for nothing.

Shoes off in three of the five, so wear something you can manage while standing on one leg in a doorway. Photography is refused almost everywhere here, and the houses are better for it.

A small raked gravel and moss garden behind an earthen wall
Plate III · i · a · vi — The borrowed view, and the wall that decides where it stops.
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