Archive for the 'Japan' Category

Posts relating to Japan and things Japanese

Another Visit to the Shugakuin Imperial Villa in Northeastern Kyoto

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 [...]


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Valerie Wigglegram at the Eigenji Temple

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 [...]


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A Peek at Not-Yet-Peak Autumn Colors in Japan, To Pique Your Interest

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 [...]


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Kyoto’s 2018 Fall Foliage Season is Upon Us

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. [...]


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Surveying Supertyphoon Jebi’s Damage North of Kyoto, Part 2

Today's post is a continuation of "SUPER FUN!! Cycling in Supertyphoon Jebi" and its followup, "Surveying Supertyphoon Jebi’s Damage North of Kyoto, Part 1".

At the end of the previous post, we'd come across a fallen utility pole, as we had a few times earlier....

The photo above is looking back toward where we'd come from, and in it there's a farmer leaning against a truck in front of his house. He'd told me that the road was not passable even by foot, but I'd dismissed it as an exaggeration. I shouldn't have.

What follows are a bunch of photos [...]


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