(IMAGE: Shrine Patronage)
Still feeling miserable from my cold, today's post is simply a collection of a few thin-depth-of-field shots. The one above is of a line of posts that forms a wall at the edge of a shrine in the Gion area of Kyoto, each post having the name of a shrine patron. I took it while doing some night cherry-blossom photography. You can see a more conventional shot of the same scene on this Aunt Jeannette In Kyoto post.
(IMAGE: Preschool)
The chairs above were awaiting the kids for one of the events at the Preschool Mochi Production day.
(IMAGE: #1036)
Bidding farewell to my [...]
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(IMAGE: Cherry Blossoms and the Snowy Bridge)
Being March already, I thought I'd look forward to Kyoto's cherry-blossom season, which should be ramping up in to full swing in a month or so. The orange blur in the background of the picture above is the Snowy Bridge from a post week ago. Photos in that post were looking down the canal toward where today's photo was taken.
The photos in today's post, of course, were not taken today; they were taken in late April last year after most cherry blossoms in this area were long gone. The blossoms here are of a late-blooming variety that appeared on [...]
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(IMAGE: Bamboo Floor)
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Bamboo floor of the outside walkway at the tea house of the Murin'an gardens, taken last summer when my friends KFC and Verena visited Kyoto.
The next two are stones on the beach of Honohoshi Cove on Amami Ooshima, of the Amami island group in the far south of Japan, in the South China Sea. The curved stones make a surprisingly calming sound as the waves wash up and down them.
(IMAGE: Smooth Rocks)
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(IMAGE: Smooth Rocks II)
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The final one today is also from our trip to [...]
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(IMAGE: Plum Blossoms at the Zuishin'in Temple) March, 2006 — Photos by Katsunori Shimada
In the last week or two I've started to notice some early blossoms around town. As far as I know, plum are the earliest, so that's what I assume they are. They tend to have much deeper, richer colors than cherry blossoms, and so can be more striking in one sense, but also more concrete and mortal in another. (Cherry blossoms, on the other hand, when experienced first hand, definitely lean toward “intangible” and “ethereal”.)
Last year I posted my first blossom pictures on Valentine's day. It seems that this year I've had [...]
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(IMAGE: 50 Years Shy of their Golden Anniversary) some random couple that just got married
The cold that I've had for the last couple of weeks has finally started to subside, which is good timing (finally!) because it allowed us to make a trip we've been planning for a while, an overnight a few hours north by train to Kanazawa, to see Japanese pop singer Kousuke Atari (中孝介) in concert again. (We've also seen him in Miyajima, twice in Tokyo, in Osaka, and in Takamatsu.)
Anyway, earlier today I was killing time in the hotel lobby after we checked out when applause erupted from the hotel's “wedding [...]
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(IMAGE: Anthony Rides a Police Horse)
Another day, another 826 pictures. Thank goodness that I decided to catch up a bit on email this morning rather than photograph the start of the Kyoto City Half Marathon, or I would have had even more photos to deal with.
As part of the festivities surrounding the half marathon, which starts and ends right here south of the Heian Shrine, the Kyoto Prefectural Mounted Police allowed kids between 4 and fourth grade to get a horse ride. Fumie's mom, who watched Anthony while Fumie and I were in Kanazawa took him over. Unbeknownst to him, I followed along [...]
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(IMAGE: Lots Going On at the Kenrokuen Gardens)
As I mentioned earlier, we made a short trip to Kanazawa the other day. Among the area's attractions are the Kenrokuen Gardens one of the so-called “three famous gardens” in Japan. It dates back to the 1600s, although its present state was formed later, in the mid 1800s.
It's famous for its beauty in the snow, and according to pictures I've seen it's pretty amazing in the spring, summer, and fall as well. Early march – with no snow and no flowers – is perhaps not the best time to visit, but we enjoyed it nevertheless.

Throughout the [...]
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(IMAGE: Product Inspection)
Soybeans are the building blocks of nature. Lower on the periodic table than even hydrogen, all matter in the universe is made from some form of soybeans. When roasted, they are not only useful for driving out demons, they can be ground into a fine, tasty flour called kinako. I've mentioned kinako in passing before (in Aburi-Mochi: Grilled Mochi on Skewers, and in Preschool Mochi Production).
Today, Anthony and Mommy made some kinako, just for fun.
(IMAGE: Mortar and Pestle)borrowed from Fumie's folks
(IMAGE: You Just Know a 5-Year-Old Enjoys This)
(IMAGE: Earnest Toil)
(IMAGE: Picking out the Shells)
The roasted beans [...]
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(IMAGE: Main Entrance, Kyoto Station) North, “Karasuma” Exit
Zak sent me an article about some planned large-scale redevelopment around Kyoto Station, which reminds me that I've still not followed up on my earlier post about the area: The Most-Excellent Architecture of Kyoto Station.
When I snapped the picture above, I was standing in the huge atrium that is the shell around which Kyoto Station was designed. Beyond the glass oval thing in the center are the ticket gates, beyond which are the trains. Above the ticket gates is a glass-enclosed walkway connecting one area of the station with some restaurants and a hotel.
I really like the glass [...]
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Update April 11th, 2008 Lightroom 1.4.1 has now been released to address the problems discussed below. Download links are here.
Yikes, it seems that 1.4 has a bug: the “time taken” is set to midnight in copies of the file that are exported. The Lightroom database and the original files maintain the correct time, but when you export a copy (e.g. to upload somewhere), the time is reset to midnight.
This is most unfortunate. I don't know whether I can work around it in the plugins. Until this is resolved, I'd recommend staying with 1.3 unless the benifits of 1.4 are worth it for you.
Drat.
For [...]
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Earlier I posted a few preview pics of late-blooming “bundle-of-tissues” blossoms, and of plum blossoms, so today I'm posting a few pics of Kyoto's run-of-the-mill “cherry blossom” blossoms.

These first three pictures were taken a year ago by hooking up a bunch of extension tubes between the camera and my big Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 zoom. I didn't yet have my good tripod, so this big, heavy combination on my previous (tiny, flimsy) tripod made for a comical view.

The three pictures above are fairly so-so – nothing special – but I've included them here to delay you a bit so that the images in [...]
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(IMAGE: In Preparation)
In my earlier cherry-blossom previews, I featured pictures from years past (standard cherry blossoms, some crepe-paper fluffy blossoms, and some plum blossoms), so for today's post I'd show what Kyoto's cherry blossoms look like today.
Around lunchtime, I found myself on the grounds of Kyoto's Imperial Palace, which is filled with all kinds of cherry trees. Pictured above is a nice stand of four surrounded by an old bamboo fence, but like the others, it's not yet their time. In three weeks or so, they'll be glorious. (See yesterday's timelapse movie for a sense of the timing.)
This next one features a raintree-shaped tree that will [...]
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(IMAGE: Little Girls' Shoes)
The Japanese school year, like the Japanese fiscal year, ends on March 31, so this year is winding down, and yesterday was the graduation ceremony for the oldest class at Anthony's preschool, equivalent to kindergarten in The States. From early April, those kids will be starting first grade (and Anthony will be starting his final year, to graduate this time next year).
Graduations – from preschool, from elementary school, from middle school, from high school, and from college – are all big events. Yesterday, the graduating kids were wearing their finest, some in traditional Japanese clothes, some in western clothes.
Parents, relatives, [...]
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I feel absolutely overwhelmed with stuff I want to write about and share.
I was hoping to finally get around to posting about some interesting things from last week's trip to Kanazawa. I'd already done one post with a few pics from Kenrokuen Gardens, but there's so much more, including the interesting “Modern Art (Japanese Style)” train station, and a pool you can go into without getting wet...
(IMAGE: Kanazawa Station)
(IMAGE: Inside-Out Pool)
However, those plans got interrupted because Saturday was the graduation ceremony at Anthony's preschool, which created its own subject matter that awaits posting. I did do the one already, but I could [...]
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(IMAGE: River of Bamboo Lanterns)
I thought today was going to be a continuation of being overwhelmed with photo opportunities, but luckily, my subconscious saved me from too much damage by arranging for me to forget to charge my camera batteries before heading out to the target-rich environment (photographically speaking) that is the Kyoto Higashiyama Hanatoro night lightup event.
It's going on every evening for a week or so in the Higashiyama (“Eastern Mountain”) district of Kyoto just south of where I live, where quaint streets are closed to all but pedestrians and rickshaw, and lined with lanterns and the occasional brightly-lit display of ikebana. To [...]
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(IMAGE: Ropes of Paper Cranes)
A preface to today's post: I have two monitors, one that's really good (a mid-level Eizo LCD), and one that's on the high end of normal (a Dell LCD). The intense colors of the cranes make today's pictures look amazing on the Eizo, but they're utterly bland and pedestrian on the more consumer-oriented monitor. Oh well.
(IMAGE: Entrance Gate, Tanigumisan Kegonji Temple) Ibigun, Gifu Prefecture, Japan
As I mentioned the other day, we recently made a trip to the Tanigumisan Kegonji Temple several hours away in Gifu. In the picture above, you can see Anthony standing under the gate, just to the [...]
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(IMAGE: Emperor and Empress) Hinamatsuri display made by 5-year-old Anthony
Hinamatsuri – the doll festival – is from a tradition that dates back about 900 to 1,100 years. Young children and older girls put out displays of dolls of the Heian court (the Japanese imperial court from about 800 to 1200 AD). Some people put out huge, elaborate displays with many dolls and accessories, but I much prefer to see Anthony's artwork. All the kids at preschool made them in the same basic form, but each ended up quite different, with its own personality.

I've got to wonder whether the emperor's frown is on purpose or [...]
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, f/6.3, ISO 250 — full exif & map (IMAGE: Lightup at the Kiyomizu Temple)
I went out again to the Kyoto Higashiyama “Hanatoro” Lightup event last night. The word “Hanatoro” is made from the characters for “flower”, “lantern”, and “road”. The event had plenty of them all.
I used a tripod for all my shots, with shutter speeds ranging from half a second up to 30 seconds.
, f/7.1, ISO 200 — full exif & map (IMAGE: Lightup at Maruyama Park)
The cherry tree above is perhaps the most famous in Kyoto, although here its branches are still bare. In a couple of weeks it will be [...]
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(IMAGE: Boys Will Be Boys)
Anthony and I visited Zak and his 3-and-a-half-year-old son Gen for a day of play, including a trip to the same park in Otsu City that Anthony and Monet played in last week (that I mentioned on my Overwhelmed: an Embarrassment of Riches post).
The two boys spent most of the time playing in the water.
(IMAGE: Under a Bridge)
(IMAGE: “Let's Go Down There”)
(IMAGE: “Hmmm, I Like the Sound of That....”)




At this point they started to walk away on the path (a path that leads down to a busy street), so I [...]
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(IMAGE: Spooky Tree)
Finally getting around to writing one of the posts I mentioned in Overwhelmed: an Embarrassment of Riches, here's the “spooky tree” that our guide, Hirozou-san, showed us tucked away in a far corner of the small and sparsely populated Kakeroma-jima Island of southern Japan's Amami Island Group in the South China Sea. We visited Amami over the New-Year holiday.
(IMAGE: Cluster of Roots Dangling Down)
The whole tree seems to be made up of nothing but twisty tangled clumps of aerial roots that drop down to establish new trunks. As time progresses, they get sturdier and become trunks, branching out to start the [...]
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(IMAGE: Plum Blossom Desktop Background)
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After Easter mass, we made the 15-minute drive over to Kitano Tenmangu, a Shinto shrine in north-west Kyoto that dates from 947, famous for its pink and white plum blossoms. It was my first visit.
(IMAGE: Most Trees Were Like This)
We didn't realize just how past their prime the plum blossoms were: the trees were mostly bare. I see now that they have their plum-blossom festival in late February, so we're a month late to the party.
Still, there were a few bunches of blossoms here and there, in deep pink, bleached white, and [...]
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(IMAGE: Last Stragglers)
Since we still don't have any cherry blossoms yet, at least in my part of Kyoto (although the first ones should start popping out soon), I'll finish up with the pics from yesterday's trip to see what remains of the plum blossoms at the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine.
Yesterday's pictures were from the free areas of the shrine. It costs 600 yen (about six bucks) to visit the gardens, although that includes a bit of plum tea and some crackers. The garden has two parts, a lower part split by a little stream, and an upper plum orchard.
(IMAGE: Lower Garden Walk) I imagine [...]
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(IMAGE: First Cherry Blossom) Kyoto, Japan  ·  Spring 2008
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Well, at least the first that I've noticed. Returning from a trip to the store around 2pm, I noticed a few blossoms on the trees near my place. It's just in time, too, because as I noted in the last couple of posts, the plum blossoms have started to wane. So, I grabbed a few snapshots of them, and even turned a couple of ones with blue sky in the background into desktop backgrounds....

(IMAGE: Most Trees Still Like This)
Using the time-lapse sequence I made last year as a guide, [...]
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(IMAGE: Hirozou Yasuda)
As I mentioned on my recent Overwhelmed: an Embarrassment of Riches post, I've been meaning to write about Hirozou Yasuda (安田ひろぞう, or just “Hirozou-san”), the guide we had for a day on Kakeromajima, one of the small southern-Japanese Amami islands in the South China Sea.
We're getting ready for another trip to Amami this weekend, having visited the first time over the New-Year's holidays. I don't know that we'll run into Hirozou-san, but Fumie has been exchanging emails, so I hope so. We really enjoyed the day we spent together.
I tended to take pictures of Anthony, so most pictures I have [...]
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(IMAGE: Delicate (but Thoroughly) Pink) Cherry Blossoms · Kyoto, Japan
I'm not sure what variety these blossoms are, but they're quite different from the standard white blossoms that are just getting going in Kyoto, the late-blooming fluffy pink variety, and (of course) the deeply rich plum-blossom pinks. The colors are much like the shidare zakura (“crimson willow cherry”) that fill the nearby Heian-Shrine, but the tree doesn't seem all that willowy, so I don't know.
I've been busy on Lightroom projects, and trying to get ready for a short trip to the Amami Islands that we're starting tomorrow morning, but I knew this tree was at full bloom, so [...]
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