The leaves are out in force even in late November.
Spring and Fall are Kyoto's glorious seasons, and although this season's foilage is said to be weak, it seems that I'm getting loads of great pictures every time I go out (and am going out a lot, since it's so nice and there are so many wonderful places close by).
I'd posted many nice photos when I wrote about our summer trip to Ryouanji. Ryouanji (龍安寺 -- the Ryouan Temple) is a small temple tucked in near the mountains in the north-west part of Kyoto, near its more famous tourist-spot brother, Kinkakuji (金閣寺 -- the [...]
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We went from fall colors just a few days ago to bleak gray today, and Kyoto's first snow.(Well, at least the first snow that I've noticed.)
Kyoto's first snow of the season, as seen from my livingroom window
When I woke up it was a bit above freezing (which is about as cold as it ever gets during the winter) with a steady rain. There were, however, cars on the street with a few inches of snow on them, probably having come from northern Kyoto where it snows much more. Then lo and behold, huge chunks of snowflake the size of Frosted Mini Wheats started [...]
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There's a strong tradition in Japan to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances at least once a year by sending a “nengajou” (年賀状), a New Year's postcard. The Japanese Post office holds them as they're mailed, and delivers them en masse on New Year's morning. The average family might get a bundle of 50-150, while someone high in business or politics could well get thousands, I suppose. (Someone like me who is absolutely horrible at keeping in touch gets just a few, although it's gotten better due to Fumie's more socially-adept influence.)
One side of the postcard is generally reserved for the Post [...]
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We're finally making progress on our Christmas Cards and nengajou (Japanese New Year's cards, as mentioned in my previous post). Last week, I had a horrible time trying to get them made. We had a few photos from which a nice card might be constructed, and I spent considerable time with some web sites on which you can construct/order cards.
The format for a Japanese New Year's card is pretty standard, with these items: A seasonal greeting (“Happy New Year” or the like, in English or Japanese) Perhaps a more personal greeting (“our family expanded this year”) The names of everyone in [...]
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As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I went to the post office to mail some of this year's Christmas Cards. These were all destined outside Japan, so I needed to add the postage myself (the in-Japan New Year's cards are postage prepaid, at the domestic rate).
The postage on an international postcard is 70 yen (about $0.60 US). I wanted to use something more interesting than bland meter-stamped stickers for the postage -- I wanted pretty stamps.
So, I asked if they had any nice Christmas-type stamps. I don't really know what I was thinking even to ask, since Christmas is [...]
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I was sitting this morning on the livingroom couch having a cup of coffee watching Anthony play nicely by himself, when suddenly he started the following conversation: Is Mommy Sleeping? Yes. Is Mommy good cooker? Yeeeees, Mommy's a very good cook. Is Mommy good sleeper? Yes, I suppose so. Is Mommy good player by self? Hahaha, yes, Mommy can be alone without being fussy. Is Anthony good player by self? Yes, you play by yourself very nicely. Is Daddy good player by self? Sure, Daddy too. Mommy Daddy Anthony good player by self...? Yes, we all play [...]
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Every year, Rohm Corporation puts on an “Illumination” display -- lots of holiday lights -- at their corporate headquarters in Kyoto near the Jusco Diamond City. It's really quite nice.
 
Even from the parking lot, it's quite pretty.
 
A fairly isolated tree on the north side of the parking lot, and its reflection in the top of my car.
 
It's nice to walk around, or, since it's on city streets, just drive through. We did both.
 

Rohm 'Illumination' site
Map
My pics(starting at the bottom of the page)
It continues through until Christmas night.
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By now it's all melted, but our area of Kyoto got its first real snow accumulation of the season this past weekend. We got a few flakes earlier in the month, but today we got about an inch or two (while it looks like the northern part of the city got quite a bit more).
  View of the garden below my livingroom window after our first snow accumulation this season
Before
One hour (and four-year-old twins) later
 


Anthony certainly enjoyed the snow (see all 8 pages of pics)
  Two views of the same area, eight months apart [...]
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I'd had the impression that Kyoto didn't get much snow, but we got a few inches yesterday and quite a bit more today. Fumie's mom said that she doesn't remember this much snow in Kyoto since when she was a kid.
When I brought Anthony to playcare, I had only my cell phone camera, but snapped a few pictures.
 
Sanjo St., near Higashioji St.
 
Arriving at playcare
Wow, there's a lot of snow!
 
Poor scooterist trying to stay upright. The road was extremely icy.
 
The standard “looking south from the livingroom” shot.
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“Fill amply, stores hermetically”
The makers of these kitchen storage containers have in all probability already been sued by SCO (the lawsuit-happy company that uses a “UnixWare” trademark).
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I don't think anyone would call it the “blizzard of '05” but the other day Kyoto certainly did get more snow than normal. It tended to come in heavily, and then be bright and crisp, and repeat. Here are two shots I happened to take an hour and a half apart, of the main gate of the Heian Shrine, as seen from my veranda:
1:20pm
2:55pm
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Who says that the Japanese don't know the reason for the season?
We received this advertisement from Antenor, a Japanese (but French-wanna-be) sweet shop who knows that the true meaning of Christmas centers around “any of numerous trees or shrubs of the genus Ilex, usually having bright red berries and glossy evergreen leaves with spiny margins.”
And at more than $20 for a tiny cake less than 5" in diameter, their idea of Christmas sure isn't cheap.
One possible source of the high cost is, looking at the decorations, they seem to have splurged for the entire “Merry Christmas”, rather than the far-more-common, far [...]
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We seem to have started a new family Christmas Eve tradition.....
First, we enjoyed the free mini concert that the Kyoto Hotel Okura puts on in their nicely-decorated lobby each Christmas Eve. We enjoyed it last year as well, when they had a men's choir. This year they featured the Tokyo Horn Spieler horn quintette.

They started out with a huge alphorn (looks like a 20-foot-long tobacco pipe originally used to communicate long distances in the Alps), then moved on to a pair of natural horns (like French Horns, without keys or valves -- basically, just an alphorn all wound up). Finally, they moved on [...]
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Santa brought Anthony a new truck, and even after he'd played with it for several hours, I was awe struck by the concentration he showed, paying rapt attention to every detail.
Unlike most of the 15,000 photos I have of him (would you like to see them all? , these actually reflect the real Anthony that we see every day in person.
I'm totally enthralled with this whole series of a dozen or so shots, which I took at the kitchen table while he played.
 

 

 

 

 
(Daddy side comment: I remember when I could focus [...]
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Instead of the usual “good morning” from Fumie the other day, I got “oh, stinky!” I thought I could generally tell when my breath was less than the proverbial bouquet of roses, so I was somewhat surprised.
I breathed into a cupped hand and smelled, and noticed nothing untoward. She suggested that I wipe my finger on the back of my tongue and give that a whiff. It sounded slightly odd, but I gave it a try, and wow, talk about putrid! I hadn't been expecting any result, much less that result. I almost vomited.
A toothbrush on the tongue did little to assuage the situation [...]
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