Tofuku-ji is the great Zen temple of southern Kyoto, and the one walk here that turns on a single bridge over a single ravine. Founded in 1236 and named to borrow grandeur from Nara's Todai-ji and Kofuku-ji, it kept the oldest Zen main gate in Japan and gained, seven centuries later, a set of gardens that argued Zen could be modern. Three kilometres, an unhurried morning, and a turnaround you'll resist.
Start under the Sanmon gate of 1425 — two dark storeys nothing else nearby can match for age. Then the Hojo, the abbot's hall, wrapped in Shigemori Mirei's 1939 gardens: the north one a checkerboard of square stones melting into moss, as fine a piece of garden-making as the country has.
The Tsutenkyo bridge is the centre — a covered walkway over a gorge of maples, incandescent in late November, green and quiet the rest of the year. Cross it for the founder's hall, then walk south to Komyo-in's ray-of-light moss garden, where you'll sit longer than planned. Tofukuji station is a few minutes back the way you came.
