Behold! This is Nyannyan-ji, or "Meow-meow Temple", the only temple in Japan (maybe in the world even), where the priests are all cats. I couldn't meet the current sandaime (third generation) head priestess Koyuki because she was asleep, but her well-dressed 11-y.o. assistant Konatsu was also very impressive. This bizzarre place was created by a shrine/temple painter Toru Kaya who was inspired by his beloved pet. Although technically it is not a functioning temple (no religious ceremonies are held here), the altars look quite serious - you can notice offerings of canned cat food, flowers, statues and other buddhist attributes arranged pretty professionally.

Tripadvisor has very mixed reviews for Nyannyan-ji: people either love it or get super frustrated because they travelled a long way to find a "fake" temple that looks more like a cat cafe and a souvenir shop combined. As for me, I am definitely on the first side: I got another chance to admire the extremities of Japanese cultural open-mindedness.

Ruriko-in Temple left me speechless. I thought we already missed the red leaves high season so we decided to check it out just because it was very close to Nyannyan-ji. It turned out we had to book our visiting time online because of some new corona-induced regulations, but I made a sad naive foreigner face and in a few minutes they found a vacant spot on the list and we could finally enter. The views from the main building were amazing: the interiors on every floor framed different portions of the garden in a perfectly calculated way, so that you could see a completely new scenery from every room in the house. The intensity of this visual experience puts Ruriko-in on my top 5 list of places to visit in Japan.