Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 5600 — map & image data — nearby photos
at the Rokkaku-do Temple (六角堂), Kyoto Japan
I had the pleasure to have lunch today with Rick and Lily Hancock, visiting from Seattle. Rick has been reading my blog for years, and often comments, so we finally met “IRL” (In Real Life).
We spent all our time talking over ramen at Gogyo (五行) so didn't have much time for an outing afterwards, but walked over to the Rokkaku-do Temple for a few pictures.
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 4500 — map & image data — nearby photos
As I described on this post six years ago, it's common at temples and shrines to pay a small fee for a random “fortune paper”. If you get a good one, you take it home, but if your fortune is bad, you leave it tied it to strings or sticks near where you got it. An example from earlier in the year can be seen here.
At the place today, they were tied to an actual willow tree.
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Out of town school kids and the taxi driver escorting them around
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 3600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 3200 — map & image data — nearby photos
The temple dates back at least 800 years, presumably predating the Starbucks Coffee immediately adjacent to it.
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
overlooks the side of the temple grounds
I feel a bit sorry for these in-city temples that have become hemmed in by modern progress, though I suppose whether an immediately-available Starbucks is a curse or a blessing likely depends on just how much you like slightly-overpriced consistently-made good-enough coffee.
(Rick and Lily are from Seattle, but have never been to a Starbucks, a pattern that I don't think they broke today.)
It's Rick's comment in April that really got me to dig into why Strava elevation-gain value for a bicycle ride is unreliable, eventually leading to a massive amount of work that ended up in “The Voodoo of Elevation Gain and Strava (and How I Get Around It)”. But as it turns out, the desire for more accurate results caused me to eventually abandon the initial project favor of an even larger one that combines my ride data with road and elevation data from the Japanese government. I've finally built up a large enough corpus of data on area roads that I can now get very precise elevation-gain data for my rides. It's been a huge amount of work, and it's all Rick's fault.🙂
Rick has promised* to come back in the spring for an extended cycling vacation, so he'll finally be able to ride the Kyoto mountains he's said he enjoys seeing so much in my blog, and enjoy the fruits of the huge software project that his comment was my impetuous to build.
* He didn't actually promise.