Chatting with a visitor to Kyoto yesterday, she said that she really wanted to see Japan's fall foliage sometime. That prompts me to dip into my archives for a fall-foliage post today, with photos from a visit last November to the Shugakuin Imperial Villa in north-east Kyoto.

It was a brilliantly bright day and even with my polarizer filter (which normally has a wonderful effect with fall colors) the photos seem washed out to me, but some are still not too bad.

This is my second visit, the first having been covered starting in “My First Visit To Kyoto’s Shugakuin Imperial Villa” where I explain a bit about the place.

As I explain in the post about my first visit, visiting is only by reserved tour, and it moves along at a brisk pace with little time to stop and compose a photo. Knowing this, I moved forward quickly so that I could stop and have a moment before the rest of the group caught up...

The tour pauses for a moment at some minor outer building.

The tour stops here for a couple of minutes so you can enjoy (and photograph) the view, which is nice, but both times I've been here I've not been able to do it justice. Here are the shots last time..

Later we come across a less-minor building that has some old paintings on the doors, of the hoko rolling floats of the Gion Matsuri Festival held every July for more than a thousand years...

I posted a close up of the painting in an earlier post. In modern times, these old hoko are festooned with lanterns, so look like this and this.

At some point along the path I turned around to get the trailing crowd...

Japanese citizens wanting to visit the imperial sites in Kyoto must make reservations far in advance, but a foreigner (non-Japanese) can often make a same-day reservations. Each group of foreigners can bring one Japanese citizen with them, and this time I brought my masseur friend Kataoka-sensei. (Coincidentally, I had a massage from him today to handle a severely-pulled neck/shoulder muscle; the guy is a miracle worker.)

Continued here...