(IMAGE: Lots Going On at the Kenrokuen Gardens)
As I mentioned earlier, we made a short trip to Kanazawa the other day. Among the area's attractions are the Kenrokuen Gardens one of the so-called “three famous gardens” in Japan. It dates back to the 1600s, although its present state was formed later, in the mid 1800s.
It's famous for its beauty in the snow, and according to pictures I've seen it's pretty amazing in the spring, summer, and fall as well. Early march – with no snow and no flowers – is perhaps not the best time to visit, but we enjoyed it nevertheless.

Throughout the [...]
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(IMAGE: Bamboo Floor)
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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, in the South China Sea. The curved stones make a surprisingly calming sound as the waves wash up and down them.
(IMAGE: Smooth Rocks)
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(IMAGE: Smooth Rocks II)
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The final one today is also from our trip to [...]
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(IMAGE: Cherry Blossoms and the Snowy Bridge)
Being March already, I thought I'd look forward to Kyoto's cherry-blossom season, which should be ramping up in to full swing in a month or so. The orange blur in the background of the picture above is the Snowy Bridge from a post week ago. Photos in that post were looking down the canal toward where today's photo was taken.
The photos in today's post, of course, were not taken today; they were taken in late April last year after most cherry blossoms in this area were long gone. The blossoms here are of a late-blooming variety that appeared on [...]
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Continuing with the Snowy Gardens of the Heian Shrine series (earlier parts: Part I, Part II) from last Sunday's snowy morning walk in Kyoto, we had just arrived at the garden's covered bridge when it started to snow again.
(IMAGE: Entrance to the Bridge)
(IMAGE: View over the Water) just as the snow was starting
(IMAGE: View over the Water) a few minutes later
(IMAGE: Checking Out the Snowflakes)
(IMAGE: Photographing the Snowflakes)
(IMAGE: Protecting Mommy from the Snowflakes)
Quite coincidentally, a few days before I took these pictures, I happened to have posted some pictures of the gardens from last summer, including one of [...]
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(IMAGE: Couple 'a Rocks)
Continuing in a series about Sunday's snow in Kyoto, and the Heian Shrine, following after yesterday's Snowy Gardens of the Heian Shrine, Part I, we move over toward the north-east gardens....
(IMAGE: Fringe of Color)
(IMAGE: Snowy Roof)
(IMAGE: Stepping Stones)
The stepping stones seen above are apparently a big draw, but they didn't seem particularly interesting to me on this day. I was more interested in how the lattice roof (as mentioned yesterday) made for an area that looked like a little porch area for enjoying the gardens.
(IMAGE: Covered Bridge)
(IMAGE: Stone Lantern)
(IMAGE: Ducks)
The shot of [...]
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(IMAGE: Gardens at the Heian Shrine This Morning) Kyoto, Japan
With a forecast for snow all night, I was disappointed to wake up to find less accumulation than we had the other day (Amazing Snow at the Heian Shrine), which itself wasn't really all that much. In fact, it was sunny out. Still, we all went for a walk, and despite no prognosis for good photography, I brought along the camera and tried to make the best of it.
It was clear that it was going to be an unphotogenic time when we arrived at the bridge featured in yesterday's Snowy Bridge [...]
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(IMAGE: This Morning)
Today was one of those “Why I Hate Living in Kyoto” days.
We awoke to a touch of fresh snow this morning, so Anthony and I headed out to play in it for an hour before he had to go to school. His play involved knocking snow off of anything that held it, and mine involved a Nikon D200 and a 17-55 f/2.8 zoom.
I took 249 pictures, of which 228 avoided the cutting room floor (including the iffy crow and snow shot I posted earlier). Of those that survived, there must be about 50 that are – to me – just stunning.

(IMAGE: Heavy Burden)
I posted one set of pictures from yesterday's snow in Kyoto, from the morning. I hope some of the pictures were nice, but mostly they were for storytelling – not for their intrinsic beauty – because the lack of beauty in the photos accurately reflected the snowy urban reality of the scene.
However, later in the day, I found myself in northern Kyoto, just before the city ends and the mountains begin, just as a snowstorm ended and a brilliantly rich, blue sky was emerging. This time, my pictures' lack of intrinsic beauty is a reflection of my lack of photographic skill, because the [...]
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(IMAGE: Pretty Flowers)
It's been a while since I've posted something pretty just for the sake of posting something pretty. I used the photo above to illustrate the Book on Photography that Doesn't Suck in my Good Photographers, Bad Writers post last year.




I came across these flowers outside someone's home, on the way back from the Kyoto Keage Water-Treatment Plant last May, after I'd just about been blinded by the brilliant beauty of a bazillion azaleas.
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(IMAGE: This Pretty Much Sums it Up) (ninety seconds later, powerful wind and rain slammed into us)
We took a short trip over the New Year holiday to the Amami Islands of southern Japan, in the East China Sea about halfway between Okinawa and the Japanese mainland.
The map below shows our flight back, from the northern part of the main Amami island (circled in green) to Osaka (circled in blue). Mentally, Amami feels much further away than Hokkaido (circled in Red) where we visited last May, even though the latter is indeed farther away.

When we went to Hokkaido, we took an 18-hour [...]
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(IMAGE: Red Berries of Some Sort)
Winter is fairly blah in Kyoto, color/nature-wise. Kyoto is glorious in autumn and glorious during cherry-blossom season, hellatiously hot and humid in summer, and blah in winter. But one thing it has in winter are red berries of all sorts.
While walking back from the shrine-closing ceremony in mid-November, I noticed some berries growing wild by a small river...
(IMAGE: Red Berries of Some Sort)
Since then, I've started to see them all over, whether in small plants, on shrubs, or in trees. Here's an old house fronting the river, with large bushes of red berries flanking on either [...]
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(IMAGE: Port of Takamatsu)30 Minutes Before Sunrise
Fumie and I made an overnight trip to the city of Takamatsu, in Kagawa Prefecture, on the large island of Shikoku, Japan, to see pop singer Kousuke Atari (中孝介) in concert. Just as I did the last time we made an overnight trip (which was also to see Kousuke Atari in concert, at a shrine in Miyajima), I awoke early to see what photo opportunities there might be in the early of morning.
Unlike Miyajima and our extended time there, which produced so many nice (or story-telling) pictures that I had to make a Miyajima category on my blog, we [...]
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(IMAGE: Heading Home)four and a half minutes after sunset
Kyoto had some wonderful sunsets last month. The picture above is a crop from a shot I took from the top (fifth) floor of my building just after sunset. It doesn't look much different than the original frame, except for the size of the birds. Here's the uncropped frame...

I'd used my 200mm zoom to try to isolate the orange, and just got lucky with the birds. A couple of minutes prior, I was using my wide-angle lens and got some of the blah cityscape in there, as well as an airplane far above....

I love my Nikon D200, but yesterday added a new woe to the “Dead Battery Syndrome” I experienced a couple of months ago: “Black Frame Syndrome”
Yesterday, Kyoto was a cold and heavily overcast, with sporadic misty rain. Occasionally and all too briefly, the sun would poke out in brilliant fashion to set the foliage momentarily on fire, so on the way back from picking up Anthony at preschool, I stopped by the grounds of the old imperial palace, now mostly a big park heavily laden with fall colors at their peak.
The trees were amazing, but it was dark and dull, so it wasn't too interesting [...]
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Wall Made From “Unrolled” Bamboo
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On the way back from the Eikando-Temple event that yielded the Bonanza of Fall-Foliage Desktop Backgrounds (among others), we came via a street here in Kyoto that I've traveled often, and whose views I've always admired. Yet, it was the first time that I noticed that one of the walls lining the road along the way was covered in weathered, “flattened” bamboo. I'd never seen such a thing.
The bamboo had apparently been scored lengthwise many times over its entire circumference, then flattened to make a flat veneer. Without ever having heard of such a thing, one [...]
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Today was one of those “I hate where I live” days (in Kyoto, Japan) that I seem to be having a lot lately. A simple visit with some friends to the “Fall-colors Festival” at the preschool of one of their friends turned into a veritable feast of indulgent photographic delights.
The fall colors have been creeping up for the last couple of weeks, as I've shown in a few posts (here, here, here, and here), but it's definitely not yet even near peak. Still, there are some wonderful spots of color, and many of them are at the Eikando Temple (where, according to [...]
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