It was raining off and on (mostly on) yesterday, but I accepted a kind invitation from Nils Ferry to visit his in-law's house in Kyoto's Miyagawa-cho district. It's the main center of Kyoto's geisha world, although lesser known than the nearby Gion nightlife area, which is both more famous and generally more picturesque.

(Gion has been featured a few times in my blog, with long-exposure cherry blossoms, and some regular night cherry blossoms, and a few pictures in one of the posts about my Aunt Jeannette.)

Gion is the area where they often work, but Miyagawa-cho is the main area [...]

Adding to yesterday's post about our trip to the fire pits on Mt. Daimonji, here are a few more of Anthony and Kana-chan.

As I mentioned yesterday, the view felt much closer than from the summit. Oddly, being lower/closer made the feeling of height more impressive.

Some were inspired to flight...

The lower-right "leg" of the "大" (as seen when facing the mountain) is very, very long -- about 140m of very narrow, tiny, steep steps -- so the view from near its top, just below the center of the character, is impressive.

Once back in the outer-edges of the [...]

Continuing with the ongoing set of posts on last fall's Mt. Daimonji hike, after having lunch at the top of the mountain, we headed down a bit to the Daimonji hidoko, the Daimonji fire pits.

The word "Daimonji" -- 大文字 -- literally means "big character," both in the lower-case opposite sense of "upper-case," and in the sense of "the Chinese character that conveys the meaning 'big'."

"Daimonji" is also the name of the mountain in Eastern Kyoto that has a big 150-meter-wide daimonji, 大, on it.

"Daimonji" is also the name of the festival held every year in August, in [...]

We've had several days of rain... it is the rainy season in Japan, after all... and this morning I noticed Aotan (a great blue heron living around here) sitting on a branch over the canal looking miserably wet. He was still there a half hour later, so I got out the camera (and the umbrella) for a picture.

I took a picture from a distance, then came to the closest point on shore. He was still quite a distance away (much further than the mere three feet that separated us the last time we met), so I was surprised when [...]

After the baptism yesterday, Anthony and I got together with some other friends, and ended up going to Hieidaira (a small community nestled in the mountains, just over the border from Kyoto, in Otsu) to see some huge mushrooms.

Nils Ferry's wife Yoshiko and three-year-old son Greg were with us. I've met Nils many times (such as when he took me to some temples in his area to see the autumn colors last fall), but had never had the pleasure of meeting his wife.

The mushrooms were big and fuzzy....

Apparently, they start out as balls, then start to expand [...]