Kinkakuji

The Golden Pavilion is an essential tourist destination if you are visiting Kyoto. The city has managed to survive countless wars and natural disasters, but because of its historical content, it was eliminated as a possible atomic bomb target during World War II. While I was in Kyoto for a summer class, one of the places we visited was the Golden Pavilion. It was beautiful. The entire two-story building is gold plated, and stands alone amongst trees and bushes, sitting next to a small pond.

Since I was there for a class, we had to do some reading about Japan before we got there. One of the books we read was The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, by Yukio Mishima. It is a novel based on the burning of the temple in 1950 by a young Buddhist acolyte. The story is very well written, and brings what might seem like a boring historical moment to an exciting, passionate story of a confused boy.

My favorite part of the book was painting a picture of what I thought the temple looked like while I read, then getting to see the real thing only a few days later.