Search ResultsIn "Exquisite Beauty Growing Like a Weed by the Side of the Road" the other day, I noted that while driving through a sparsely-populated village deep in the mountains of Uji City south-east of Kyoto, we made a stop to check out a local shrine we happened upon. The shrine's entrance gate appeared in yesterday's "Scenes From Rural Japan: Mountain Village in Uji City" as well. The shrine has the name Kiyotakiguu (清瀧宮), and is just a small local shrine for the village, like any number of similarly unassuming local shrines and temples that have appeared on this blog (recent [...] View full post » While Anthony was at his swimming lesson last Sunday morning, I decided to kill the hour by scooting the kilometer over to Mt. Yoshida and poke around. I "discovered" Mt. Yoshida when Stéphane Barbery (he of my earlier Jidai Matsuri festival photos and the wilting flower posts) introduced me to it back in April. At that time I got to visit only one small part; this time I wanted to visit the major shrine I knew to be there.... somewhere. Mt. Yoshida is a relatively small outcropping in the middle of town – about 35 acres, half the area of [...] View full post » 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 in Kyoto to find only a light dusting [...] View full post » 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 [...] View full post » As I introduced the other day, a small Shinto shrine about a hundred yards from my place here in Kyoto shut down because its main benefactor had passed away, so they had a ceremony to ask the shrine's spirit(s) to return to whence they came. Apparently, such ceremonies are exceedingly rare. Some shrines like the nearby Heian Shrine are huge multi-acre affairs, but most are much smaller. There are literally thousands of shrines in Kyoto, with the median size probably about the size of the one that shut down: about the area of a single parking space. As part of [...] View full post » |