(IMAGE: Tent Practice)
Fumie grew up going camping several times a year, and has fond memories of it. We're not really the “outdoorsy” type, but we thought it'd be nice to give Anthony the same experience, so we're heading camping for a few days. We borrowed her folks' tent, and her dad and I (and Anthony, of course) practiced setting it up in the living room....
(IMAGE: Doing His Part)



I went to Costco yesterday – there's one an hour south of Kyoto – to get some supplies, but ended up buying a tent. It cost only $120 but is about the [...]
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, f/3.5, ISO 500 — full exif & map — nearby photos (IMAGE: First Evening) Half an hour after sunset.
I mentioned the other day that I was going to take Anthony camping for the first time, and I did. We just got back this afternoon.
I'll write more about the whole experience another day (one that I don't wake up at 5am), but the location was a campground on a cliff overlooking Kotobikihama beach (map) about three and a half hours away by car, in the far north-western corner of Kyoto prefecture.
I took the picture above on our first night, about half an hour after sunset. It [...]
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We started our camping trip last week, May 1st, heading out at about 11am for what should have been about a 3.5 hour drive. Unfortunately, there was some kind of parade that caused the road I happen to have taken to be intermittently closed, turning roads in eastern Kyoto into a parking lot. It took 20 minutes to go half a mile. Not a good start.
Having gotten past that, I thought things would be smooth sailing, but quickly ran into heavy traffic again. I took some side streets and eventually got through the city. What should have been 15 or 20 minutes had taken an hour, [...]
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Bringing Home the Bacon
I've been so overwhelmed with built-up stuff to do since returning from camping with Anthony that I've only just started really looking in detail through the photos I took, and came across this interesting shot. At the end of the second day, Anthony was out on some rocks just off the beach and playing with some new friends, and I was with them and enjoying the sunset and conversation with their mom.
I then noticed this bird flying by and something seemed very odd about it, so I quickly snapped the lopsided picture you see above. (I seem to have a [...]
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(IMAGE: Good Samaritan) Satsuki-san
It seems that my cellphone somehow dropped out of my pocket while scootering home today. Lucky for me, a kind stranger found it and called the "HOME" entry in the address book: she told me that she'd found my phone before I even realized I'd lost it.
It's not fun to lose a phone. The last time that I lost my phone (which was also the first time I lost my phone) it was a huge hassle to have to get a new one, new plan, re-enter data, etc. Yuck. (It turns out, though, that the phone was just hiding in a [...]
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(IMAGE: Wisteria at the Sandai Shrine) Kusatsu City, Shiga Prefecture, Japan
The day I got back from camping, Fumie happened to hear from a taxi driver about a small out-of-the-way shrine not too far away that had a nice bloom of wisteria (or fuji – 藤 – in Japanese), so yesterday afternoon we made the 45 minute drive to Sandai Temple in Kusatsu to check it out.

I guess wisteria is normally a climbing plant, but here they have them dangling from horizontal trellises. They were mostly purple/lavender, but there were some light pink ones as well.
There were a lot of big bumblebees among the [...]
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(IMAGE: Up with the Sun)
Picking up my “Camping with Anthony” story (about my camping trip with Anthony to Kotobikihama beach, in northern Kyoto Prefecture, Japan) from after the end of Day 1....
On the second day, the sun rose at 5:07am, and, unfortunately, that means that we did too.
(IMAGE: View from the Camp)
(IMAGE: Someone Else Up Early Too) ( the early bird catches the, er, fish )
We decided to talk a walk along a path to a big hill we could see along the coast, stopping by a big beach in between that the path dipped down to.
(IMAGE: View Back [...]
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(IMAGE: Getting Wet)
Picking up my “Camping with Anthony” story from after our early-morning walk on Day 2....
The campground is on a cliff overlooking part of Kotobikihama (northern Kyoto Prefecture, Japan), a large beach more than a mile long, with many distinct sections. We spent the rest of the morning, and the early part of the afternoon, exploring, but it eventually came time to get wet.
Nearest the campground was a section of wide beach fronted by rocky outcroppings....

(IMAGE: Running in the Water is Fun)

(IMAGE: It's Fun to Get Wet)
(IMAGE: View from Near Our Tent) ( Anthony is right [...]
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(IMAGE: Exploring With New Friends) On the rocks off Kotobikihama beach, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan
I ended my previous post about day 2 of camping with Anthony with the story that we'd returned from dinner in time for the sunset.
When we got out of the car at the campsite, Anthony was playing with a superhero toy of some sort that he got at the store. (Because camping is special, “we” decided that he can get a small $2 or $3 toy each day that we happen to go to a store while camping.)
A boy about his age was walking by with his mom, and made [...]
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(IMAGE: Akiko-chan and Anthony Hopping Rocks) Stepping stones across the Kamo and Takano Rivers, Kyoto Japan
Anthony's kindergarten had a field trip yesterday, so the pickup time and location were different from normal, this time near the spot in Kyoto where the Kamo river joins the Takano River to become (oddly enough) a different Kamo River.
He wanted to play more, and his friend Akiko-chan hadn't left yet, so we decided to go down to the river together to play. I didn't have my nice camera with me, but I took a few snaps of the fun with my cell-phone camera.
(IMAGE: This Looks Like a [...]
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(IMAGE: 10 Years Ago Today)
Today was our 10th wedding anniversary.
It wasn't quite what I might have visualized 10 years ago – we were all pretty tired, and even normally robust Anthony was a bit under the weather – but Fumie and I got here together, and that's what it's all about.
Her mom invited us for Happy-Anniversary pie (a pie that Anthony felt the need to put candles in)...
(IMAGE: Sea-Bream-Shaped Apple Pie) The chocolate “card” on its dorsal fin says “Happy 10th Wedding Anniversary”
Anthony was torn between wanting to put candles in, and wanting to eat the chocolate card and [...]
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(IMAGE: Day 3: Long Day of Play)
Day two of my camping adventure with Anthony ended pleasantly, with new friends and a nice sunset.
Day 3, however, started much earlier and much less pleasantly than I would have expected – right at midnight – when some rude family burst into the campground with loud voices and bright lights, searching for a spot to set up their tent, then setting it up.
Inconsiderate people suck.
I barely got a few hours of sleep, and was up at 5:30 or so with Anthony and daybreak. Day three was Saturday of Golden Week, meaning that now the crowds would [...]
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the scrumptious visual delight of (IMAGE: Noh Theater)
I had an amazing photographic and cultural opportunity fall into my lap this weekend.
Unfortunately, I didn't realize it until after I got home and did a bit of after-the-fact research.
One of the mommies at Anthony's preschool has three daughters. One is four years old and in the preschool year below Anthony's, and another is a year older than Anthony, having graduated from the kindergarten in March. (Like the Japanese fiscal year, the Japanese school year ends in March.) The third is older, perhaps around 13 or so. These children are absolutely exquisite. They're cute and beautiful as [...]
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Timelapse Panning Video one hour compressed down to 12 seconds  ·  no sound by Sean McCormack ( larger high-def version is here )
At right is a short timelapse video (12 seconds, no sound) that Lightroom expert Sean McCormack made from the collection of 300 images he ended up with after setting his camera up on a tripod and having it take a shot every 10 seconds for 50 minutes.
To see the high-resolution version, go here and look for the “four arrows” icon at the lower-right of the video. Click that to put the video into full-screen mode. Then, click the “scaling is on” [...]
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Day 4 of my camping trip with Anthony started early, as usual, but without the prospect of having to move the tent (as I did the previous day), I looked forward to a day of fun.
(IMAGE: Already Up for Hours) 8:15am, Kotobikihama (Kyoto Prefecture, Japan)
Anthony's new friends had returned home the previous evening, but now he had May and Monet to play with, and added new friends Emma and her older brother, Benjamin, as well.
Kotobikihama beach is large – about a mile long – with several distinct sections. This morning, we headed out to the main part of the beach, which is quite a [...]
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(IMAGE: A new way to caption in my Lightroom plugins)
Photo metadata has evolved a mix of seemingly comparable ways to label a photo. Lightroom allows you to enter a “Title”, a “Caption”, and a “Headline”, among others, so which should you use when you upload your images to an online photo-hosting service? That depends, of course, on how what fields you've entered into Lightroom, what you've entered into them, and your goal for the label.
My plugins for Adobe Lightroom that allow you to export photos to online photo-hosting services (for:  Zenfolio  ·  SmugMug  ·  Flickr  ·  Picasa Web ) allow for a simple selection from among the [...]
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(IMAGE: Bunch of Pink Puffy Flower, er, Puffy Things) Lobby of the Hotel Okura, Kyoto Japan
On the way home from the park the other day, Anthony and I stopped by the Hotel Okura to pick up a birthday cake for Fumie's mom. Kyoto's Hotel Okura has a first-floor restaurant with excellent (although extremely expensive) food and cake that's part of our Christmas-Eve Tradition.
Not wanting to leave my camera outside in my bicycle basket, I had it with me, and couldn't help but take a picture of the lovely puffy flowers in the lobby. They're all fairly long hand-held exposures, but seem to have turned out [...]
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Day 4 of my camping trip with Anthony to Kotobikihama beach (northern Kyoto Prefecture, Japan) was a day full of sun and sand, marred only by a few minutes of wind-driven terror (or, at least, wide-eyed surprise, as my tent almost got blown away).
The night was pleasantly warm, as opposed to the freeze-your-toes-off cold that it had been on previous nights, so that was welcome. Unfortunately, along with the warmth came a howling wind that buffeted the tent in loud gusts that were jarring both mentally and physically. I spent from about 1:30am to 3:00am trying to make sure my tent and Arthur's sunshade didn't get blown [...]
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(IMAGE: Marveling at Innumerable Shrine Gates) Fushimi Inari Shrine, Kyoto Japan
(IMAGE: Hundreds of Miniature “Shrine Gate” Offerings) Fushimi Inari Shrine, Kyoto Japan
Wow.
Wow wow wow.
I've lived in this part of the world for the better half of the last 20 years, but today was my first visit to the Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷大社) in south-east Kyoto, and it was amazing.
I'd heard enough about it to know that it had a path lined with a bunch of torii gates, but I was totally unprepared for the thousands and thousands of gates lining miles of mountain paths.
And frankly, that wasn't even the best [...]
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(IMAGE: Endless) at least, seemingly so
(IMAGE: Hodgepodge)
Here are a few more pics from the early part of my visit to Kyoto's Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷大社) with Anthony yesterday....
(IMAGE: Arrival)
(IMAGE: Carefully Checking the GPS)
(IMAGE: I Love This Kind of Roof)
I tend to take pictures of them whenever I see them (all the time), so I'm surprised that they've appeared on my blog only three times in the past, in posts about Arashiyama, Giouji Temple, and Konpukuji Temple.
Part of yesterday's Elaborate Sub-Shrine facing the pretty lake....
(IMAGE: Scenic Overlook)
(IMAGE: Rack of Offerings)
I really liked the rack of [...]
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(IMAGE: Little Boys Like Sticks) making noise with it as you go makes walking more fun
Continuing from Part 1 and Part 2 about our visit to Kyoto's Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷大社).....
A short climb from the pretty lake mentioned in Part 1, you come, surprisingly, across a couple of small buildings, one a restaurant, straddling the path:
(IMAGE: Mountainside Restaurant) 三玉亭
We stopped for a juice, and to chat with the lady. She was 86, and the fourth generation of her family to own/run the little restaurant. The shrine owns the land, but for whatever reason, the family has these buildings. The building across the path was [...]
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