Kyoto · JP

山縣有朋別荘 第二無鄰菴跡

Tucked along the canal-lined Kiyamachi entertainment street in central Kyoto stands an unassuming stone marker reading "Daini Murin-an"—the Second Murin-an. It marks the place where Yamagata Aritomo, the towering Meiji statesman and army marshal, kept a town villa before he moved on to build the celebrated Murin-an garden near Nanzen-ji. Today the ground he once walked over is the garden of the Ganko Takasegawa Nijō-en restaurant, a quietly lush slice of old Kyoto a short stroll from the city's business heart. This is one of Kyoto's cleverer hidden finds: a genuine historic garden you can step into beside a bowl of sushi or a full kaiseki meal, without the crowds and ticket queues of the famous temple grounds. Water rushing in from a branch of the Kamo River animates a small, well-shaped landscape of stone, lanterns, an old tea house and autumn maples—a pocket of the city that has collected four centuries of merchants, statesmen, bankers and novelists.