Byōdo-in Temple

This guide to Byodo-in Temple in Uji, near Kyoto, opens in 1052, the year Buddhist scholars believed marked the start of a degenerate age when devotion alone might no longer save anyone. You'll hear how the aristocrat Fujiwara no Yorimichi responded by turning his father's riverside villa into a working replica of paradise, and about the sculptor Jocho, brought in to carve its centerpiece. Stand at the edge of the pond and watch for the reflection the whole design was built around.