Yoshimine-dera, Kyoto

In the extreme southwest of Kyoto, situated on a hill, this Buddhist temple also goes by the name of matsu no tera or Pine Tree Temple. It gets this name from a 600-year-old pine tree, two branches of which have been trained to grow horizontally for about 55 meters. It is Japan's greatest pine tree and goes by the name Yuryu (Flying Dragon). It was designated a national monument in 1932. Little visited by tourists from overseas, perhaps because of its out-of-the-way location, the temple was founded in 1029, destroyed in the Onin Civil War in the 15th century and later rebuilt by Keishoin, the mother of the fifth Tokugawa Shogun.

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