For reasons that I don't fully understand, shirts with English on them are extremely common in Japan. I think it's considered "cool". It's been this way since before I first came 20 years ago.

Sometimes what is written is a bit odd or silly, like the shirt above, on a lady watching a magic show (at Blume no Oka).

Most often, though, what is written makes absolutely no sense.   At all.   But that's okay, because most of the population doesn't have the ability to realize that it makes no sense, so everyone remains stylish and happy.

Here's a representative one [...]

Every time I head up to Shogunzuka like I did yesterday, I have to go by car because motorcycles are not allowed on the final part of the road going up the mountain. (I think because there was a big problem with drag racers and such 15 years ago.)

Motorcycles are allowed on the lower part of the mountain, but only sometimes....

It took a few moments to let this sink in before I actually understood the meaning: Motorcycles prohibited except weekdays 7am-9am.

I made the 10-minute scooter ride this morning to Kyoto's Yamashina Ward, to explore what I thought was a mountain road that I discovered yesterday with Google Earth. Sadly, it turns out that the road is not open to the public. Still, I came away with a few nice shots from the mountain-village area just prior to the gate.

This is all very close to the concrete jungle that is Kyoto... perhaps half a mile (it's two miles from my place), but as I've mentioned so many times (especially here), once you get into the mountains, you feel like the [...]

I was at Arthur's house today helping out a bit with his remodel, and couldn't help but notice how lovely an effect the crumpled leaves made as they surrounded the stepping-stones in his garden.

The leaves came from this tree, now mostly devoid of color or leaves...

For reference, here's what they looked like 10 days ago, as they were approaching full color...

I also had some shots at full color, from a week ago, but I seemed to have deleted them by accident during a dyslexic moment when I zero-filled the wrong memory card. Doh!.

On our trip to Takamatsu this time last year for a concert, we drove across the Akashi Straights Bridge (明石海峡大橋), which, with a main span of almost 2km long, is the longest suspension bridge in the world. The whole bridge itself is 3,911 meters long.

A mile or so past the southern end is a big parking area with shops, a little park, and (of all things) a Ferris wheel ("the largest at a highway rest stop in Japan, if not the world").

There's also a section of the main suspension cable on display...

Just looking at the steel wire [...]