The previous post, "Another Visit to the Shugakuin Imperial Villa in Northeastern Kyoto", ended with the photo of an old tea house. To give a better sense of its common, simple architecture, here's wigglegram of the room:

Last month, as Kyoto's fall foliage season was just ramping up, I made my second (or third?) visit to one of the Japanese Emperor's estates in Kyoto, the Shugakuin Imperial Villa (修学院離宮).

The villa can be visited only by reservation, and the online reservation system is generally completely booked for the entire three months ahead that it has available. However, it's substantially easier for foreigners (non-Japanese citizens) to make a reservation in person at the Imperial Household Agency office in Kyoto; Kobe cycling friend Adrian took advantage of that, and kindly included me in his reservation.

I've posted about this [...]

Here's a wigglegram of Taiwan-based photographer Valerie Roche near the back entrance to the Eigenji Temple (永源寺) in Shiga Prefecture, from the outing earlier in the month touched on in "A Peek at Not-Yet-Peak Autumn Colors in Japan, To Pique Your Interest".

If the location seems familiar, it's perhaps because of a wigglegram of Paul Barr in the same place, two years ago, appearing in "The Back Entrance to Shiga’s Eigenji Temple".

It's such a photogenic temple in autumn, I have to show from that trip for a dozen more postgs, but sadly I got around to only "Rear Courtyard [...]

One reason that I don't blog so much these days is that when I do go out with the camera, the places I visit are so overwhelmingly beautiful that I get choice paralysis in deciding what to work on, and what to write about. I start to work on one set of photos, only to get drawn into a hundred side channels for things I want to share, and in the end I share nothing because nothing finds its way all the way to a blog post.

So with the intent to fight agsinst that, I set out this morning [...]

The fall colors starting to descend upon Kyoto has woken me up, at least momentarily, from an almost-two-month blogging slumber. Friends Paul and Olesia are visiting, Paul for the 100th time, Olesia for the first, so we took her up to the Ohara area of Kyoto, in the north-eastern mountains, for the first taste of autumn colors.

Walking up from the parking area toward the temples, the path is lined with tasteful shops. Here's a little kiosk selling only autumn-color handkerchiefs:

On the way in, we stopped by a shop that gave taste samples of their various dressings and ponzu. [...]