7 entries, with sources
Zen monks / Hosokawa Katsumoto·c. 1499
Jobs regarded this minimalist dry landscape rock garden as the pinnacle of aesthetic design and returned there repeatedly during his trips to Kyoto.
Jobs visited Ryoan-ji multiple times, remarking to Walter Isaacson: 'I have always found Buddhism, Japanese Zen Buddhism in particular, to be aesthetically sublime. The most sublime thing I've ever seen are the gardens around Kyoto.'
Neem Karoli Baba·1974
Jobs made a pilgrimage to this Himalayan ashram seeking guru Neem Karoli Baba, a journey that deeply shaped his lifelong embrace of Eastern spirituality despite discovering the guru had died.
Biographer Walter Isaacson documented Jobs's 1974 trek with Dan Kottke across northern India to Neem Karoli Baba's ashram in Nainital, Uttarakhand.
c. 1930
Jobs's understated 1930s red-brick Tudor home in Palo Alto, consciously chosen for its unpretentious, un-gated integration into a normal neighborhood.
Isaacson and architectural accounts describe Jobs's deliberate choice to live in an unassuming Old Palo Alto home with an open garden and no security gates so his children could grow up normally.
Tawaraya·c. 1700
This historic, ultra-traditional inn served as Jobs's consistent sanctuary and primary base whenever he stayed in Kyoto.
NHK reporting and multiple biographers note that Jobs always stayed at the 300-year-old Tawaraya Ryokan during his trips to Kyoto, appreciating its meticulous hospitality and minimalist craft.
Matsuoka Haruo·1983
A commercial gallery in Tokyo's Ginza district where Jobs nurtured his passion for Japanese shin-hanga prints and purchased dozens of Kawase Hasui woodblocks.
Dealer Haruo Matsuoka documented Jobs visiting in jeans and a t-shirt in March 1983 to begin collecting shin-hanga, leading to the purchase of 25 Kawase Hasui prints over two decades.
c. 1705
Jobs's favorite soba noodle restaurant in Japan, which he frequented whenever he was in Kyoto, always ordering cold soba with tempura.
Jobs's driver in Kyoto noted that Misoka-an Kawamichiya was his favorite restaurant in the city, where Jobs regularly ordered cold soba served with tempura and soba rolls.
Ohnishi Toshiya·c. 1960
A destination sushi restaurant in Kyoto where Jobs ate lunch with his family on his final trip to Japan, praising the fatty tuna as the best sushi he had ever tasted.
Master chef Ohnishi Toshiya recalled Jobs sitting at the end of the counter in 2010 ordering seasonal sashimi and remarking, upon tasting fatty tuna (toro), that he had never tasted such delicious sushi.