Wow, my third post of the day. I didn't intend to take any pictures today, but with Anthony's style choices in the morning, and the stunningly orange sunset in the evening, I've had no choice.
On top of that, I went a bit early to pick up Anthony from school, and stopped in to the grounds of the old imperial palace (Kyoto Gosho) to check on the fall foliage there. I think it's safe to say that the opening act is on stage, but the headliners are still in the dressing room.
The “opening act” are some of the trees that turn early. We've seen [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: First Photo of the Evening) facing due west
This evening we had perhaps the most stunning sunset I have ever seen.
Sadly, I saw it from the photographically-unappealing vantage of the fifth-floor walkway in my condo, but at least I got to see it. When I first caught a glimpse, I literally sprinted for the elevator, and the photo above is the first I snapped when I got up there.
(IMAGE: Unrealistic) it was actually more amazing than this facing south-west
(By the way, that's Kyoto Tower in the lower left, seen previously on my blog here, here, here, and here)
Some sunsets have a mesmerizing mix of [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Anthony and “Uncle Thomas”) Kibune, Kyoto, Japan
Today was another day of overcast and occasional rain, like yesterday but much colder (10°C vs. 21°C). With my friend Thomas Hertel visiting from Germany, we headed into the mountains of northern Kyoto, to Kibune, where nature is always quite pretty. I've been there enough over the years that I have a Kibune category of posts on my blog.
Kibune has been a popular destination for over a thousand years (some of its story being told in my Kibune Shrine (sort of) post). It's famous these days mostly for the coolness it offers in Kyoto's oppressively hot summers, and for [...]
View full post »

— full exif & map — nearby photos (IMAGE: Thomas Hertel) near the Nanzen Temple, Kyoto Japan
An old friend from my days working at Omron in the early 90s visited Kyoto today. He's German and lives in Germany, and I hadn't seen him since he attended my wedding in Kyoto in 1998, where he was the only one to fly in from outside Japan. Along the same lines more than 10 years later, he took the opportunity of a business trip to Korea to pop over to Kyoto for the weekend, just in time for the start of some nice fall colors.
Unfortunately, the weather [...]
View full post »

Finally having gotten around to look through the pictures from the “October Birthdays” party at Anthony's kindergarten, I'd like to add a few more to those I posted the other day....
(IMAGE: Preparation)
(IMAGE: Preparation)
(IMAGE: Preparation) pumpkin soup
(IMAGE: Birthday Kid) one of seven
(IMAGE: Anthony's Picture of Daddy) using his iPhone to take a picture of Anthony wielding a D700 + big 24-70/2.8 lens
(IMAGE: Picture Daddy Took)
(IMAGE: Not Too Bad a Technique)
On the wall in the background of the picture above are some drawings the kids made of ninja (of themselves as ninja, I think). Anthony's is in the center here:
(IMAGE: [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Middle of Nowhere)
Fumie's dad is stationed in Malaysia for work, but since he's in town for his 60th birthday, he thought it'd be nice to try to see some fall colors. (They apparently don't have seasons in Malaysia.)
I've posted a few fall-color previews (Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3) with photos from previous years because it's still way too early in the season this year, but as I mentioned the other day, there are a few hints of color starting to appear, so we all headed out for a drive in the mountains today.
After about three hours (half of which [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Apple-Pie Shaped Fish)
That caption might not make sense at first, but read on...
Yesterday was Fumie's dad's 60th birthday, which is a major life event in Japanese culture, and so this evening we had a party for him. Among the vast quantity of food was a fish called a tai (鯛), which is served at auspicious events due to the somewhat corny reason that its name is the final sound of omedetai, “auspicious”. (It probably felt much less corny ages ago when the tradition began, because back then, a gift of food was a true gift indeed.)
Anyway, on Fumie and my 10th [...]
View full post »

A few more pictures from Tuesday's train there, boat back kindergarten event....
(IMAGE: Awaiting Departure)
(IMAGE: Leaving the City)
(IMAGE: Touch of the Approaching Fall)
(IMAGE: River We'll Return On)
(IMAGE: Back of the Bus) on the way from the train station to the river dock
(IMAGE: Sudden Curves)
(IMAGE: Surprises) are exaggerated at 14mm on a full-frame camera ( much more so than an 18mm on a 1.5×-crop camera )
(IMAGE: Getting His Relaxation On) prior to being admonished by the driver
a few of Anthony's classmates (IMAGE: Waiting for the Boat) in good spirits
(IMAGE: Boat Worker Guy)
(IMAGE: Heading Out) Anthony and I [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Lunch for 25)
My blog's list of posts for this month gives a hint as to just how busy this month has been, with Anthony's birthday, a server hardware upgrade, two new Lightroom plugins (proximity search and, earlier today, geoencoding), a bunch of kindergarten events including the “Sports Day” Festival that I haven't finished writing about, or yesterday's train and boating event whose pictures I haven't even looked at completely.
It's been a particularly busy month.
Today was no exception. Anthony's preschool/kindergarten holds an after-school party each month for the kids with a birthday that month, and today was October's. Wednesday is normally a half day that lets [...]
View full post »

Anthony had a parent/kid kindergarten event today that I went along on. It involved taking a train along a river, then a boat back.
(IMAGE: Will Be Gorgeous in a Month) when all those deciduous trees turn
(IMAGE: Heading Back)
(IMAGE: Sometimes Fast) ( one of three boats in our group )
(IMAGE: Sometimes Calm) ( the spyglass look is because I used a DX lens on an FX camera )
Much of the world's fall-foliage season of color is in full swing, or even already over, but Kyoto's is still in the “hint of what's to come” stage. Mostly you see nothing, but this [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Anthony's English Homework) copying words
Anthony sometimes has homework from his “English Kids” activity at his kindergarten. Despite the Nikon D700's horrible focusing screen, I seem to have gravitated to really thin depths of focus lately, perhpaps because with the bad focusing screen I can't really see just how thin it is. Anyway, I sapped a couple of shots of Anthony doing his homework...
(IMAGE: “Potato”)
(IMAGE: “Anthony”)
(IMAGE: Oops, the “y” was Backwards)
View full post »

kindergarten relay race (IMAGE: Opening Leg)
I mentioned the other day some of the cute events the three and four year old kids did at Anthony's preschool's annual sports festival. Last week, prior to the festival, I was sort of lamenting to Anthony about how he was growing up, and how the sports day was so cute when he was younger, but now he's getting big, and is in the oldest class (kids who were five years old when the school year started in April; Anthony turns six tomorrow).
He said something along the lines of “Yeah, when I was little the events were cute, but now [...]
View full post »

As I mentioned yesterday, Anthony's preschool/kindergarten had their “sports festival” this weekend. It's Anthony's third and final year, and I continue to be impressed with the planning and implementation that the mommies and teachers do to put this on, and how perfectly age-appropriate everything is.
The cutest, of course, are the youngest class... kids who were three years old when the school year started in April. Their first event was an obstacle course titled 「げんきいっぱい　よーいどん！」 which translates to the less cute “Lotsa' Energy, Ready, Go!”.
Here's the course for the event:
(IMAGE: Youngest Kids' First Event)
Three at a time, they jump [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Note from Anthony)
I mentioned in Anthony's First All-by-Himself Letter a few days ago that while writing his first full-fledged note all by himself, he'd made a grammar mistake in writing the わ sound as わ when, due to its grammatical use in the sentence, it should have been written as は. The alphabet is remarkably regular, with only a few special rules like this. Few as they are, they need to be learned and absorbed, so we lightly mentioned it to him in passing.
I didn't expect it to be something that he really “got” for a while, but he wrote it properly in [...]
View full post »

The old pictures of Anthony swinging in the park two years ago that I posted last week reminded me of some foliage photos I took on that same outing early in Kyoto's 2006 fall-foliage season. So, I thought I'd use them to kick off Part III of my Kyoto Fall Foliage Preview (prior installments: Part I · Part II).
(IMAGE: Yellow Grass) as seen on this post ( Hmmm, not really "foliage, I guess... )
(IMAGE: Entrance to Someone's Property)
(IMAGE: Something's Lunch)
I was sitting on my bicycle with the wind howling when I tried to get the shot of the leaf... very hard to [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Anthony's Note to Mommy) “Write your response in the box”
Anthony has never really shown any interest in reading and writing (nor, for that matter, much interest even in being read to). It's been almost a year since he could write his name in English and in Japanese, but that's about as far as he's cared to take it. As I've written before (How To Raise a Bilingual Child and More on Raising a Bilingual Child), I am careful not to ram linguistics down his throat, lest he turn away from it.

Many of Anthony's peers can read and write fairly well, but still, at his [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Prepped and Ready for Immediate Departure) ( this morning's play )
Fumie's mom took Anthony on a helicopter ride yesterday, the five-minute flight time “Bay Area Course” offered by Ogawa Air (小川航空) in Osaka.
Here are some pics from her cell-phone camera...
Harnessed Up
Parking Lot
Ready to Go!
Post-Flight Photo-Op
The flight was only five minutes, but that's more than I've ever done. In fact, prior to yesterday, I'd known only one person who had ever been in a helicopter (20+ years ago, in the military, where he spent the flight throwing up, or, at least, wanting to).
As for me, I'd love [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Close Encounters on the Swing) (two years ago, when Anthony was four)
The weather has been really nice lately, and with my cold improving enough to move around, I thought it'd do me good to get out and enjoy the fresh air. Fumie had been watching Anthony most of the day, so I took the opportunity to take him with me to the park, him to ride his bike and me to take a nap on a bench.
I didn't bring my camera (that whole “being sick” thing has its downsides), but was able to dip into my archives for photos to illustrate today's post.

( Desktop Background Images )
(IMAGE: Kyoto Momiji)
After a cold snap over the last couple of weeks, the weather in Kyoto has really turned nice, with temperatures in the upper 70s and clear skies. My cold is starting to get better, and being outside just a bit in the glorious weather felt wonderful.
We're still six weeks away from the peak foliage season in Kyoto, so I thought today I'd continue from the Kyoto Fall Foliage Preview with a few shots taken around my place last December 2nd...
(IMAGE: Backlit)
(IMAGE: Out to Lunch)
(IMAGE: Fiery)
(IMAGE: Soft Orange)

That last one is [...]
View full post »

I have been slammed with a cold since yesterday, so today just a short post with some pics from the underground world around Osaka Train Station that I took after my trip to the Nikon Service Center last week (to have my D700 checked... they said it's my memory card, and to have the rubber grip on my D200 replaced).
One of the underground passages near the station had this pleasant waterfall wall...




( Desktop Background Images )

View full post »