Tripadvisor has very mixed reviews for Nyannyan-ji: people either love it or get super frustrated because they travelled a long way to find a "fake" temple that looks more like a cat cafe and a souvenir shop combined. As for me, I am definitely on the first side: I got another chance to admire the extremities of Japanese cultural open-mindedness.

Ruriko-in Temple left me speechless. I thought we already missed the red leaves high season so we decided to check it out just because it was very close to Nyannyan-ji. It turned out we had to book our visiting time online because of some new corona-induced regulations, but I made a sad naive foreigner face and in a few minutes they found a vacant spot on the list and we could finally enter. The views from the main building were amazing: the interiors on every floor framed different portions of the garden in a perfectly calculated way, so that you could see a completely new scenery from every room in the house. The intensity of this visual experience puts Ruriko-in on my top 5 list of places to visit in Japan.

It had the most expensive entrance fee I've seen so far in Kyoto [2000 yen for adults], but you can stay in the temple as much as you want and try hand copying a Buddhist sutra in one of the rooms with these wonderful views. Sutra copying is believed to cultivate one's merit (like instant good karma). The practice originates in ancient China and became popular in Japan during the Nara period (8th century).