Kodai-ji

Toyotomi Hideyoshi rose from peasant to effective ruler of Japan and died in 1598. His widow — Nene, also known as Kita-no-Mandokoro — took the tonsure and founded this temple in 1606 to pray for him. The funding came from Tokugawa Ieyasu, who by then had taken power from the Toyotomi and had excellent political reasons for being generous to Hideyoshi's widow.

What that money bought is visible in the Otama-ya, the mausoleum where both are enshrined: interior panels in maki-e lacquer, gold powder worked into black urushi in patterns of autumn grasses, at a level of craft that is normally behind museum glass. It is the finest thing on the site and it takes about four minutes to walk past if you do not know to stop.

The two gardens are attributed to Kobori Enshu, the early Edo tea master and designer: a pond garden with two Momoyama-era tea houses above it, and a dry garden in front of the abbot's hall. The bamboo path at the top of the site is a smaller, emptier version of the one at Arashiyama and you will often have it to yourself.

The spring and autumn night openings run from 17:00, with reception closing at 21:30 and the gates at 22:00. The set piece is the Hashintei dry garden in front of the abbot's hall, which the temple lights and, in recent seasons, projects onto — a moving image across the raked gravel that is either the best or the worst thing about a Kyoto illumination depending on your taste in temples.

The pond garden with the lit maples above it is the more conventional pleasure, and the reflection in the water at about seven in the evening is the photograph people come for. Dates change each year and are announced on the temple's own site rather than fixed in advance; the autumn season generally runs from late October into early December, overlapping with the busiest weeks in Kyoto.

The temple stands on the slope between Nene-no-Michi and the hillside, which puts it directly on the Higashiyama walk between Kiyomizu-dera at the top and Yasaka Shrine at the bottom. Most people walk past the gate because it sits back from the lane behind a flight of steps.

Allow 45 minutes, or an hour if you take the bamboo path and stop at the mausoleum. The route inside is one-way and involves several short flights of steps, which makes it awkward for wheelchairs — the accessibility page covers what to ask.

• City bus 206 to Higashiyama-Yasui, then 5 minutes on foot
• 20 minutes on foot from Gion-Shijo station, uphill
• 10 minutes downhill from Kiyomizu-dera through the lanes
• The entrance is up steps off Nene-no-Michi, opposite Entoku-in

On the standard eastern day — Kiyomizu-dera at 06:30, the lanes, Gion at dusk — Kodai-ji is the natural mid-morning stop, when the lanes below have filled and a paid garden is the sensible place to be. Forty-five minutes here puts you back on the walk at about ten.

In the illumination seasons it becomes a separate evening: dinner in Gion first, then up the hill at seven when the garden is lit. The one-day plan leaves room for one or the other, not both.