One of the famous spots in Kyoto for plum blossoms is the Zuishin Temple (随心院) in Yamashina ward, and its blossoms appeared on my blog eight years(!) ago in "Plum Blossoms and Photographers". The style of both my blog presentation and photography has changed quite a bit in the intervening years.

Anyway, I made a visit this past March during plum-blossom season, but having already enjoyed the plum at the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine and at the Kyoto Imperial Palace Park, I decided this time to actually venture inside the temple building for the first time. I was joined by Damien [...]

I've been a fan of Alice Gordenker's monthly "So What The Heck Is That?" column in the Japan Times for years. I first mentioned her writing on my blog more than seven years go when referring to an article she wrote about Gold Poop. (Yes, Gold Poop. Go ahead and read about gold poop, I'll wait.)

She writes a variety of articles for the Japan Times, and also has a blog where she often goes into more detail on whatever the newspaper article was about.

Somewhere along the lines we became acquainted via email, and a couple of years ago [...]

I'd prepared a few other "off-season spring-blossom" photos that didn't fit into yesterday's post, so I thought I'd just post them today. All but the last two are from April 2013.

This was from the same trip that produced a wonderful bonanza of pictures that I've barely scratched the surface of.

The last few are from the amazing Haradanien Garden (原谷苑), which I've posted about at length in the past starting here.

I haven't done all that much blossom photography over the last two years, but I did snap this shot of the late-April blossoms on our recent trip to [...]

This post is about trimming down the file size of an Adobe Lightroom catalog. In keeping with the off-season them of my previous post (which was filled with fall-foliage photos), this post is sprinkled with a few photos from Kyoto springs past, chosen more for their mentally-calming effect than for photographic quality, which they generally lack. (Sorry)

In a nutshell, if you have a large Lightroom catalog, and if you don't need the detailed editing history for your photos, you might be able to significantly reduce the size of your Lightroom catalog by flushing that edit-history data, which might generally [...]

Chatting with a visitor to Kyoto yesterday, she said that she really wanted to see Japan's fall foliage sometime. That prompts me to dip into my archives for a fall-foliage post today, with photos from a visit last November to the Shugakuin Imperial Villa in north-east Kyoto.

It was a brilliantly bright day and even with my polarizer filter (which normally has a wonderful effect with fall colors) the photos seem washed out to me, but some are still not too bad.

This is my second visit, the first having been covered starting in "My First Visit To Kyoto’s Shugakuin [...]

Today is the 25th anniversary of my first arrival in Japan. 来日２５周年になりました！

It was June 19th, 1989 that I flew into Tokyo from California after having finished grad school and then lived with my brothers for several months while waiting for my work visa to be approved. I was met at the airport by Krish Kulkarni, whom I had never met, but had no trouble finding because he's the twin brother of my best friend at grad school, Ram Kulkarni (who later went on to be the best man at my wedding, and I at his).

A day or [...]

With Anthony away on a school trip, Fumie and I made a day-trip date to Awaji Island two hours by car south from Kyoto, where our first stop was a late lunch in heaven, A.K.A "Beefland Prince".

息子は修学旅行中なので、妻と一緒に淡路島の日帰りデートをしました。まずは「ビーフランド大公」でめっちゃ美味いステーキを戴きました。

You can't begin to imagine how good this steak was. When I say the steak literally melts in your mouth, I'm literally using the word "literally" for its literal meaning... the fats in the meat just melt away. It's almost unearthly when compared to any other steak I've ever had in this life (including the fantastic teppanyaki steak I wrote about the [...]

We had a brief heavy rain this afternoon a couple of hours before sunset, and so with the clearing air I thought to make a visit to check out the views from the Shogunzuka Overlook, which I haven't been to in a while. (However, the "nearby photos" link under any photo brings you to the bazillion photos I've posted from up here over the years.)

今日の集中豪雨の後、将軍塚からの景色を見に行きました。

It reminded me of one of the first times I posted photos from up here seven years ago, also after a storm. Photos from that day also appeared on last year's "Views of Kyoto [...]

This post picks up from "My Mt. Hiei Climb Challenge 2014, Part 1", where I'd ended with having completed the ascent in good time and good form.

It was still early (12:45ish), so I decided to check out some of the temples farther into the mountains.

Some of the paths in these mountains were laid out thousands of years ago. I'm sure these old guardrail posts aren't that old, but this next photo gives a hint to the age because the bigger post, which essentially looks brand new compared to the guardrail posts, is dated April 1936...

Dotted here and [...]

As I mentioned the other day, I recently did my third-annual Mt. Hiei (比叡山) hike, the first two years ago having been what prompted me to get in shape. Comparing this hike to previous ones is a yardstick to measure how well I'm getting in shape.

I've documented the route well enough in previous years (two years ago   -   last year) so I didn't intend to do it again this year. I did bring along a smaller camera (a Nikon D700) and the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 lens that I bought accidentally to document my progress via timestamps on [...]

今日は僕の第三回目の比叡山の山登りハイキングをしました。登るのはやっぱり去年より早い（二時間半じゃ無くて、一時間半）。 以前はバスで帰ったけれども、今回は足で、往復で28½キロ出来ました。嬉しい。ジムのおかげさまで。

Today I did my third annual Mt. Hiei climb. The climb in 2012 is what got me started on the road to getting fit. Then it took me 2h 6m to make the climb and I was completely wiped out. Last year it actually took longer (2h 24m) because I was stopping so much for photography, but I felt much better in doing it than the extra time could explain.

This year it took 1h 36m and I felt just fine when I got to the top, so much so that I didn't stop to rest, and moved [...]

We had a nice family lunch at the Kyoto Brighton Hotel's teppanyaki grill "Himorogi" (燔). With a teppanyaki meal, the chef prepares it on a grill in front of you.

This kind of meal at a Japanese Restaurant in The States often involves a big theatrical performance of spinning knives, flipping shrimp, and corny jokes, but that's an invention purely for the foreign market, and there's absolutely none of that in Japan as far as I know. Rather, real teppanyaki involves quiet, reserved, and exceedingly precise preparation with the main emphasis on quality.

Though it's not "theatrical", it is a [...]

The shot above is from quite the different vantage point from normal. I've posted many views of the main gate of the Heian Shrine on my blog over the years, such as this shot more than eight years ago. My blog's proximity search of the area reveals many more.

After living here so long it's a challenge to find something fresh, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a new vantage point the other day when a new business opened up after a long year of building demolition and then new construction.

The new business, wedding venue Rokusisui (六絲水), held [...]

This post continues from yesterday's "My First Look at Kendo: Masters Tournament in Kyoto" post, which introduced the kendo ("Japanese fencing") event I attended the other day.

These people (mostly men, but there were a few women) were 7th-dan masters (the max is 8), meaning that they've been doing this for at least 23 years. I wonder whether they get nervous before a bout.

With patience I eventually worked myself into a position that I thought would give great shots, right at the center line where the bonsai tree was directly in the line of sight inside the Japanese flag. [...]

The other day I attended some very high level kendo (Japanese fencing) bouts, my first real exposure to it other than having seen a bit six years ago during a visit to a Japanese high school.

Last week I posted a couple of lone photos here and here, but finally I'll actually write a bit about the event.

The sign says something along the line that it's the 110th All Japan Kendo Martial-Arts Exhibition.

I live a short stroll from this place, so it's a shame that it's taken me 10 years to make a visit. I had no idea [...]

I've been feeling remarkably unproductive of late, sorry. I'm hoping soon to have a proper post about the kendo ("Japanese fencing") event mentioned a couple of weeks ago, but for now here's one picture from it.

Continued here...

While driving around the sparsely-populated coastal/mountain area of western Aomori Prefecture at the northern end of Japan's main island during a short family trip last week, in the middle of nowhere we suddenly came across something billing itself as "Japan's largest waterwheel".

It seemed at least a bit photogenic, so I stopped for a quick look.

The tree in the lower left of the photo above hosted the "Dark, Brooding Camellia" (乙女椿) that I posed last week.

The "dark brooding" was because of an underexposure. A shot soon after was way overexposed, but I think I recovered something interesting(?) in [...]

If you don't know me personally you may not have a good grasp of just how stupid I am, but today's story should fill you in plenty.

Online reviews for Sigma's new 50mm f/1.4 "Art" lens have been universal in praise for its quality without respect to price, made all the more amazing that its price is ¼ that of lenses of comparable quality. I've not had good luck with Sigma in years past (as reported here and here), but all the stellar reviews made me give them another try.

Yesterday I ordered it on Amazon Japan, and it arrived [...]

We're on a short family trip to Hirosaki (弘前) at the northern end of the main Japanese island of Honshu. It's cold enough up here that their cherry blossoms are three or four weeks later than in Kyoto, and are now at their peak. There's also snow still on the ground in some shaded areas, despite being well into the 70s (~25C).

Our hotel is the Best Western Hotel Newcity Hirosaki, and I don't recommend it if moronic policies bother you. It's hot and muggy, but the room "air conditioner" works only as a heater until May 1st, after which [...]
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After day 1 of our weekend trip to Shirahama Japan we debated on what to do for the second day before making the three-hour drive home to Kyoto that evening. The area is known for having pandas, but I'm not a big fan of zoos so I didn't really want to go. (I've lived a 5-minute walk from the Kyoto City Zoo for 10 years, and have been only twice.) But Anthony wanted to see the pandas, so off to "Adventure World" we went.

Upon walking in it was clear it wasn't a normal zoo, with the entrance hall being [...]