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 » The last time I posted a picture of a burnt wall, it was due to an unfortunate fire that destroyed a nearby restaurant. This time is a bit different. The quietly famous Murin'an Garden (無鄰菴) near my house in Kyoto has outside walls that are quite varied and interesting. Some of them, such as those shown above, are wood whose top surface has been burnt to charcoal. Looking at a view showing the wall in situ you can see that the burning is clearly purposeful.. While it's clear that the wood has been burnt intentionally, the reason is not clear. [...] View full post » Anthony had a short day at school today, so while he was there, I spent half an hour at the Heian Shrine again for all the 7-, 5-, and 3-year-old kids dressed up in fancy clothes for the "7-5-3 festival", as I mentioned earlier in the week (and followed up on yesterday). Of course, there is the occasional pretty leaf... After school, Anthony and I visited Zak so Anthony and his son Gen could play, and Zak and I could make boring small talk about cameras for a few hours. Zak lives on the 15th floor of a building with [...] View full post » 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 was dark and gloomy for much of the afternoon, with intermittent [...] 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). I was sitting on my bicycle with the wind howling when I tried to get the shot of the leaf... very hard to get, much less hold, focus. The "nearby photos" link under the picture above brings you to a lot [...] View full post » |