Thirty years ago, I spent much of my first summer in Japan wandering around the Kansai, the part of the country focused on the Osaka-Kyoto-Nara-Kobe megalopolis. On August 18, 1990, I sent a postcard featuring the Kinkaku-ji to San Antonio. This is the card. I never made such a good image of the place. Or any image that I remember. For much of the time I lived in Japan, I had no camera.
Dear Jim,

My latest trip to Kyoto took me here… It’s a Zen temple. The gold color is gold leaf. The only thing the postcard doesn’t depict are the swarms of tourists behind the pavilion, each with a camera….

Dees

This is actually the Kinkaku, the Golden Pavilion (kin means gold), which is a major part of the large Kinkaku-ji temple complex (ji being a suffix meaning temple), which is formally known as Rokuon-ji.

Everyone sees the Kinkaku-ji. It’s like taking a look at Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower. That happened to be the first of a number of times I went there on a day trip, usually in the company of a visitor from the U.S.

The Golden Pavilion is often mentioned in the same breath as the Silver Pavilion, Ginkaku-ji, gin meaning silver, also in Kyoto. That too was a place to take out-of-towners.