Japanese Zen garden, the Garden of Solitary Meditation

As an avid traveler, when I'm in Japan I'm always on a tight schedule and I always run out of time. I guess that happens to many other travelers... But what would you do if you had enough time?

I would love to be able to sit and meditate at least once a day in a Japanese Zen garden. But since I don't have that time, I am content just to visit them as often as possible... And speaking of visiting Japanese gardens, if you're also on a tight schedule and want to see more in a short time - I know this happens to many of us when visiting Kyoto - you may want to visit the Daitoku-ji complex of temples. Ryogen-in features 5 astonishing Japanese Zen gardens, Zuiho-in has 2 and there's also an amazing Zen garden in Daisen-in...

Here is Dokuza-tei, "the Garden of Solitary Meditation" from Zuiho-in, created in 1961 by Shigemori Mirei. This is one of the most complex Japanese Zen gardens, with a combination of sand areas representing waves and moss covered areas representing forests...