Meeting Maki Takafuji for the first time at Seiryu-den in Kyoto.

The city of Kyoto can be a paradox. The functional train station, workaday streets and boulevards, the normal comings and goings of its citizens, the overall grey quality of most of the recent architecture, all can elicit a potentially ambivalent response. Kyoto is a UNESCO World Heritage City with an extraordinary endowment of timeless shrines, temples, mind boggling handicrafts, legendary ceramics, world class tea and sake production, the legendary home of Noh and Kabuki, and maintains all the splendor of the once ancient capital of Japan. At first appearance, however, these wonders seem very hidden, as if the greatness of Kyoto is itself wrapped in a confusing furoshiki of the modern world.

But whereas the Vatican in Rome is housed in the magisterial architecture of the Renaissance, the sibling city for Buddhism in Kyoto is an ongoing interaction with nature. You will experience more open doors framing a view of nature in a Zen Temple in Kyoto than any Catholic Church in Rome.

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