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, about where the East China Sea becomes the Pacific Ocean. The curved stones make a surprisingly calming sound as the waves wash up and down them.

The final one today is also from our trip to the Amami island group, a beach on the southern tip of Kakeroma-jima [...]

On the last day of our New Year's trip to the Amami Islands in southern Japan (all Amami posts), we went for a canoe ride among the Mangroves that grow in one spot, on the mid-eastern coast of the main Amami Ooshima island, where fresh water from a river mixes with the salt water of the East China Sea.

Fumie took on the role of Guest Services, and I was Propulsion and Documentation. (That is, she held Anthony while I paddled and occasionally tried to take a picture with one hand while trying to not drop the oar with the [...]

The roads of southern Japan's Amami Islands used to be lined with walls built from dead coral, but now only a few such remnants of the past remain. During our trip to Amami, we visited the most western village on Kakeroma-jima (the island outlined in purple on this map) and found some of the old walls. Some were quite tall, perhaps two meters.

The five sticks seen leaning against the walls in the image above are an example of what one often saw while driving around Kakeroma-jima: long sticks placed at frequent intervals along the road. It turns out that [...]

As I wrote before, it was often windy and rainy during our New-Year's trip to Amami, in southern Japan, but the weather was quite dynamic and squall might be immediately followed by brilliant sunshine.

Within 10 minutes of each of these photos being taken, it was raining.

While heading to the airport at the end of our trip to Amami (more Amami posts), I noticed this amazing "bridge ramp thingy" (I'm not really sure what to call it) while driving through the city of Naze, off in a direction we weren't heading.

This detailed map (courtesy of Google) shows that it makes two complete revolutions:

I've never quite seen anything like it. It's definitely on my list to check out next time we go to Amami.