Finally getting around to writing one of the posts I mentioned in Overwhelmed: an Embarrassment of Riches, here's the "spooky tree" that our guide, Hirozou-san, showed us tucked away in a far corner of the small and sparsely populated Kakeroma-jima Island of southern Japan's Amami Island Group in the East China Sea. We visited Amami over the New-Year holiday.

The whole tree seems to be made up of nothing but twisty tangled clumps of aerial roots that drop down to establish new trunks. As time progresses, they get sturdier and become trunks, branching out to start the process again, thus [...]

Anthony and I visited Zak and his 3-and-a-half-year-old son Gen for a day of play, including a trip to the same park in Otsu City that Anthony and Monet played in last week (that I mentioned on my Overwhelmed: an Embarrassment of Riches post).

The two boys spent most of the time playing in the water.

At this point they started to walk away on the path (a path that leads down to a busy street), so I yelled down for them to come back. Three-year-old Gen, being the three-year-old that he is, turned heel and started running away, so [...]

I went out again to the Kyoto Higashiyama "Hanatoro" Lightup event last night. The word "Hanatoro" is made from the characters for "flower", "lantern", and "road". The event had plenty of them all.

I used a tripod for all my shots, with shutter speeds ranging from half a second up to 30 seconds.

The cherry tree above is perhaps the most famous in Kyoto, although here its branches are still bare. In a couple of weeks it will be breathtaking, although sadly, you won't be able to enjoy it then unless you like loud, drunk, smoking hordes.

The big five-story [...]

Hinamatsuri – the doll festival – is from a tradition that dates back about 900 to 1,100 years. Young children and older girls put out displays of dolls of the Heian court (the Japanese imperial court from about 800 to 1200 AD). Some people put out huge, elaborate displays with many dolls and accessories, but I much prefer to see Anthony's artwork. All the kids at preschool made them in the same basic form, but each ended up quite different, with its own personality.

I've got to wonder whether the emperor's frown is on purpose or an accident. Japanese never [...]

A preface to today's post: I have two monitors, one that's really good (a mid-level Eizo LCD), and one that's on the high end of normal (a Dell LCD). The intense colors of the cranes make today's pictures look amazing on the Eizo, but they're utterly bland and pedestrian on the more consumer-oriented monitor. Oh well.

As I mentioned the other day, we recently made a trip to the Tanigumisan Kegonji Temple several hours away in Gifu. In the picture above, you can see Anthony standing under the gate, just to the right of the leftmost tall white banner. Behind [...]