Anthony and I went out today to try the remote control car he got from Grandma and Grandpa for his birthday last week, our schedule or the weather conspiring to prevent us until today.

We headed to the rear of the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art (in the same area as the “Hanami and Lunch” picture on this post) and gave it a try. I happened to have my point-n-shoot with me, so snapped a couple of pictures...

I'd not charged the battery in the week after opening it, so about the time he was getting used it, silly me, the battery wore down. Doh!

Still, it was nice out, and the setting sun was lighting up the trees like a torch, so we stayed around a while for him to play and me to take some pictures (albeit with a dinky point-n-shoot).

It seems that Autumn starts later in Kyoto than the rest of the world, which is why a month ago I used some pictures from last year to put up a Kyoto Fall Color Preview (Part I · Part II · Part III).

People seem to enjoy the season: by far my most popular post these days is last year's “Color of Kyoto” desktop background. On top of that, the individual picture on that page is – according to my server logs – the background image on about 50 different people's social-networking site (MySpace, Friendster, etc.)

Yet so far this year Kyoto has only the most early hints of what's to come. Many trees have a touch of change, but only a scattered few have really gotten colored in earnest. We happened to be near a few of those just as the final rays of a setting sun were sandblasting them with crimson, so they were absolutely livid with color.

But unfortunately, as I said, I had only my point-n-shoot. I tried, but I couldn't capture the scene.

Considering how “un-fall” it is still in most of the city, I was surprised that this particular tree was already surrounded by a thin carpet of fallen leaves.

The building you can sort of see in the center of the picture above is the Westin Kyoto Miyako, generally considered to be the best hotel in Kyoto, where heads of state used to stay until two years ago when the Kyoto State Guest House was built. Anyway, the mountain (hill) to the right is behind it, with very easy walking paths up to nice vistas, from where I took the Heian Shrine from Afar pictures, looking toward where Anthony and I were today.

Turning around to look in the same direction as that shot, but from much closer, Anthony watches the big kids play baseball.

The lighting in that shot seems a bit odd because the baseball grounds were still being bathed by the ultra-crimson last light of a setting sun, while Anthony and I were in the shadow of the museum.

It was one of those late afternoons where the clouds were brilliantly colored and captivatingly dynamic, and for half an hour they kept drawing my gaze, seemingly to completely changing character from moment to moment so as to always be newly interesting.

I tried to foster an appreciation for this beauty in Anthony, but he was more interested in making a pile of leaves.

We eventually headed home, but headed up to the top (fifth) floor to find that we just missed the sunset. He wasn't too interested in it anyway, so we went home. I swapped my point-n-shoot for my real camera, only to return and find that the fireworks were over....