I haven’t mentioned breakfast because I usually get something when I am foraging for the previous evening’s dinner. I did not do it on my way back from Osaka; never found anything I wanted. I had a cup of tea and, in bright sunshine, left the hotel to look for breakfast. The hotel has a breakfast buffet for 1200 yen, but it’s twice as much breakfast, and twice as much money, as I want. There is a McDonald’s and two Japanese fast food places on the corner where I get a bus or subway, but I didn’t want any of it. I got on the subway and went one stop to an area I had never explored. I must have walked two kilometers and never found anything except Starbucks, where I finally gave in and had a scone and coffee, that was not as good as the coffee I had from a Japanese cafe in the train station. I’m amazed at how good the coffee is here most of the time.

Walking back to the subway I came across a place called Gallery of Kyoto Traditional Arts and Crafts. three floors of wonderful objects in a beautifully designed modern setting. In addition to  traditional objects there was a show of ceramic art that was enormously impressive: five artists, each of whose with work that  was completely different and all looked like it might have been made of something else, cloth, paper, feathers, flowers. Great stuff.

I finally got back on the subway and went to Nanzen-ji where I visited two gardens in the subtemples of Konchi-in and Ten Juan. I was there before, but each of these places was worth another visit even with the weather turning from sun to rain to wind to more sun and rain.