I had an unexpectedly interesting day, photography-wise. In the morning there was a rare ceremony to close down a Shinto shrine, and then I got an invite to meet an old friend at Nijo Castle, a wonderful World Heritage Site about two miles away that I've driven by a hundred times, but until today had never visited.

I'm sure that photos from both events will be filling my blog for a month, but for the moment, a desktop background from each....

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 125mm — ¹/400 sec, f/3.5, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Wishes for Good Health

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The shrine being closed down was a very small one (about the size of a single parking space) about 100 meters from my place. As part of the ceremony, they took a bunch of sticks with people's names and ages written on them, stacked them like Lincoln Logs, and set them ablaze. It was explained to me that it was a wish for good health, and I was invited to add a stick of my own (which I gently declined).

Update: there is now a post about the shrine-closing ceremony.

Although Kyoto's Nijo Castle has cut-stone ramparts and dual, concentric moats like the much larger Osaka Castle, the buildings are really more palatial than castle-like (the Nijo-Castle buildings all one- or two-story buildings not built to withstand attack).

Unlike Osaka Castle, most of the Nijo-Castle site is original, dating back 350-400 years (except for the Inner Palace, which dates back to 1847, having replaced the original which had been struck by lightning a hundred years earlier).

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 30mm — ¹/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 500 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Nijo Castle — Inner Moat

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