Searching for a Kyoto Garden
 

I was surfing the net last week and stumbled upon an interesting looking garden in Kyoto. I didn't bookmark the page, and now I can't find any reference to it. I'm hoping someone can help! What I remember is:

- It's full of stone statues that look like the wood sprites from Princess Mononoke.

- Some statues are old, some modern. They were all carved by different people.

- They tend to be more whimsical than serious.

- I *think* it was a Buddhist garden, although I might be wrong on this.

- It is not on the main tourist route, nor in any of the tourist books I looked at.

Any ideas?

How about this?

http://www1.kcn.ne.jp/~yosikatu/rakan5.htm

Although all the hints you gave may not apply to this, just in case. This is Sekiho-ji Temple near Fushimi area of Kyoto.

Sekiho-ji is it - thanks! I'm not sure where I got that the rokan were from different artists.
And I'm glad it's near Fushimi-Inari [the fox temple with all the torii on the hillside] - that was another site I really wanted to explore.

Here's some pics of both, for those interested:

http://www.ltspicy.com/japan2004home.html
and
http://www.ab.cyberhome.ne.jp/~asano.../ls_fshmi1.htm

Wow, I can't belive this was what you were actually looking for. I thought the chance might be 90-10 for negative. Anyway glad to know that was it.

"Rokan", you mean Rakan? The Sekihoji's are called 500 rakans.

My bad - I should have written "rakan." And they really do remind me of wood sprites ... I'm not sure if that's coincidental, or if the artist intended it.

Are you from Kyoto? I might pester you for some more information ...

Thanks again!

No I'm not. I have even never heard of Sekiho-ji before. It seems I just put right keywords in Google Japan such as Kyoto & sekizo (stone-statue) in Japanese and got a few URL on Sekiho-ji on the 1st page of Google result. Go right ahead however if you have more questions on Kyoto. I'm no experts of the city but there are so many knowledgeable posters here so I'm sure you will always get some answers.

Yes, I thought too the statues did look like the spirits on Mononoke Hime.

"sekizo" must've been the magic word - I was trying so many combinations on google, jeeves, and the rest, but none scored for me.