It's not only cherry blossoms that add color to spring in Kyoto. Kawabata Street, which parallels the Kamo River as it slices north-south through the eastern part of Kyoto (kawabata means “riverbank”), is lively with botanical color. There are blossoming trees of some sort or another pretty much its whole length, and also vibrantly green wispy weeping-willow type trees, and on top of that, the hedge that separates the walkway from the road becomes fiery red for a short time in the spring.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 150mm — ¹/180 sec, f/7.1, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Many Colors of Kawabata Street

It's really beautiful, but hard to get a nice picture of because although in real life one is drawn to the beauty to the point of totally ignoring the utility poles, delivery trucks, traffic signals, road signs, power wires, and other random urban clutter in the same way one ignores the hum of an air conditioner in one's workplace, such things stick out like a sore thumb in photographs.

By the way, in rummaging through my archives from last year (the same place I found the picture above), I found a daytime shot of the Biwako Canal from the same vantage point as the nighttime long-exposure cherry-blossom shots I posted the other day....

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 48mm — ¹/250 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Biwako Canal in Okazaki, Kyoto

The building in the far background is the Lake Biwa Canal Museum of Kyoto, half a mile away.