Archive for the 'Nikkor 300mm f/2' Category

Heian Shrine Setsubun Burn, 2017: Lackluster Photos of a Visually-Exciting Event

Today was the Setsubun festival at the Heian Shrine (and many shrines around Japan). I've written about the overall festival earlier, such as "Setsubun and Mamemaki: Driving out the Demons" nine years ago, and "Attack (and Repulsion) of the Evil Spirits" five years ago.

Today I went only to watch the final bonfire event. I explain it in some detail in "Intense Burn: Shinto Rite at the Heian Shrine" from nine years ago, and so like this post from five years ago, this time are just some photos.

I wandered over to the shrine about half an hour before the [...]


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Revisiting Last Year’s Young-Adult Archery Ceremony

去年の成人の日、「三十三間堂大的全国大会」の撮影。14ヶ月遅いですが、この記事の続きです。

As I seem to do more often than not, I never did follow up on an early-2015 blog post that I intended to be just an introduction. In January 2015 I posted "The 2015 Young-Adult Archery Event at the Sanjusangendo Temple" with a few pictures and a "To be continued..." ending. So here we are, 16 months later, I've come across the event in my photo archives.The event for recently-come-of-age adults is introduced and descried on the earlier post, so I'll just get into the photos.

As I've mentioned in other posts about this annual event, the crowds are [...]


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Another Nice (Tough!) Bicycle Ride in the Mountains Around Kyoto

水曜日もサイクリングをしました。今回は友達6人と一緒に60kmの山上下いっぱいのルートでした。

Two days ago I did a short easy bicycle ride into the mountains of western Kyoto, but yesterday I did something a bit more ambitious. As seems to be the habit since my first ride with folks from Cycling Kyoto!, we met in front of the Starbucks on Sanjo Street. This time there were seven people total...

Today's route would be a repeat of one that Manseki had done two days prior, so he was group lead. We got moving at 9:20.

We spent the first 45 minutes heading east on Route 1. The route looks horrible in the [...]


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2015 Kyoto Marathon

Today was the 2015 Kyoto City Marathon. Just as when I blogged about the 2012 Kyoto City Marathon, I went out with the Nikkor 300mm f/2, but new this time is that I intended to try to photograph two acquaintances who had told me their intended pace and sent photos of what they were wearing.

To help increase my luck in picking out two faces from 16,000 runners, I set up a bit past the halfway point just before a turnaround, so runners were going both directions in front of me. If I suddenly noticed a friend going by one [...]


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The 2015 Young-Adult Archery Event at the Sanjusangendo Temple

Today was the annual toshiya archery event for new adults at the Sanjusangendo Temple (三十三間堂) here in Kyoto. I blogged about it extensively three years ago starting with "Traditional Archery Like a Boss".

I then followed up with what turned into one of my most popular series of posts, starting with "Total Discipline: Anatomy of a Japanese Archer’s Shot", followed by a note about the crowds and the hubub outside and the instructors taking their turn ("More Badass Japanese Archery") and then a look at the colorful wardrobes of the ladies and then perhaps my favorite post on the subject: [...]


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