Paul Barr, in town this week, and I made a visit yesterday to the Tenjuan Temple (天授庵) within the Nanzen Temple complex. It was my second visit inside, my first visit here having been three years ago. Earlier this year, though, I did feature the main gate of this shrine covered in snow.

Anyway, the fall colors this year in Kyoto seem a bit subdued, but it wasn't crowded yesterday and overall was really pleasant. We ended up sitting and enjoying more than taking photos.

友達ポールさんは来日して、一緒に天授庵行って、もみじを撮影しました。今年は色は薄い方ですが、雰囲気はなかなか良かった。よく落ち着いて、リラックス出来ました。

With the dark shadows under the overhang, and bright sunlight in the background, the [...]

Two weeks ago, in the "Bridges Across a Small Valley in Konan" post about an impromptu far-flung photogenically-inquisitive scooter ride, I noted that the trip had produced some delights to post about. One was an out-of-the-way temple not far from the bridges that I discovered at dusk, but it turns out that I wasn't able to get around to posting about it because I've had a really busy time since, with photographically productive visits to the Kongourinji, Konzou, Koutouin, Eikando, Sanzen'in, and Yoshiminedera Temples.

But despite not having had time to post about it, I went back to visit again [...]

In my previous posts about this weekend's visit to the gardens of the Eikando Temple in eastern Kyoto ("Holy Cow, the Gardens at Kyoto's Eikando Temple are Gorgeous!" and "More From Yesterday's Trip to the Eikando Temple") I purposefully chose photos devoid of (or mostly devoid of) people, but in fact it was quite crowded.

I detest crowds. I grew up in rural Ohio, and am definitely not a city person. The crowds leading to the Eikando Temple were oppressive, made worse by the fact that it's right next to the Nanzen Temple, itself noted for its fall colors (as [...]

So, continuing with the story about our recent visit to the Sanzen-in Temple in the Kyoto mountain suburb Ohara on Sunday (which produced the pretty desktop backgrounds I posted yesterday)....

As I said in the first post, it's a mountain temple, and so it has different zones separated by various flights of stairs....

You can see in the background of the picture above the trunks of some cedars disappearing above the lower canopy of maple and other leafy trees. The cedars here were all very tall, and ramrod straight...

The next level included a modern (circa 1989) temple building (one [...]

Fueled by an unheard-of 14 hours of sleep last night (I went to bed at 7pm! Got up at 9am!! First time anything like this in.... hmmm, how old is Anthony?), I escaped the crush of tourists enjoying the cherry blossoms in my area and took Anthony on a trip across Kyoto and into the mountains to visit the Konzou Temple (金蔵寺), a temple I first visited somewhat by chance during my bamboo-filled Western-Kyoto Mountain Drive that I posted about two months ago.

I didn't mention the temple by name in that post because I thought I'd follow up with [...]