I went out for a short photo jaunt with Damien, Paul, and Adrian yesterday to check out some of the fall color in the mountains of northwest Kyoto.

First we went through the rural Kumagahata area that was hard hit by a typhoon last month...

The road surface is back to normal; compare to this typical scene just after the typhoon.

I ride my bicycle on this road often (it's part of the Kyoto Heart Loop, for example) but had never noticed this weird bit of brick construction. At first I thought it might be the leftover foundation of some long-gone building, but then noticed the plaque embedded within:

I was left grasping at straws to understand this. The characters are much more easily understood in this photograph than it was at the time, but even then I correctly identified the bigger characters as “隧道” written right-to-left, the old way to write “tunnel”. I'd seen it only once before, as described here. But there was no evidence of a tunnel nor that there ever might have been... it was odd, and I was left questioning whether I was mixing up my kanji.

However, searching the web for 「十三石山隧道」 brings up all kinds of stuff, including this very helpful post that describes a system that brings water from the river starting at a point farther up the river (here), along a twisty but gently-sloping path that ends up about 1.3km due south to this point just above a hydroelectric power plant built in 1908. By this point the road has descended about 50m (160') of elevation, but the water has not, so now at the power plant it can plummet down to drive the turbines.

The non-“tunnel” words on the plaque, “十三石山”, apparently refers to the nearby mountain just to the west.

I find this old stuff to be really fascinating.

As we continued deeper into the mountains, we stopped from time to time to enjoy the fall colors...

I'd been meaning to check this place out; the big circular stone is hard to miss when flying by on a bicycle.

The temple building itself was all closed up, but the adjacent cemetery was photogenic in some lovely light...

Nearby back on the main street was a wall with lots going on...

With so much going on, I though that I should be able to do something with it, but in the end it's the photo above that I like the best.

We eventually made our way to the Shimyouin Temple (志明院), deep in the mountains to the north....

I first wrote about this temple six years ago in “Kyoto’s Shimyouin Temple: Exceedingly Remote, Bashful, and Serene”, and I took this hard-edged black and white photo of Paul there, but for the most part this place doesn't appear on my blog much because photography isn't allowed at most of it. One used to be allowed to bring a camera or a lunch box, but people were just too rude, so about 40 years ago they stopped letting people bring anything (including cameras) in.

We then moved on to the famous Ochiba Shirne (“Fallen-leaf Shrine”) that has been on my blog many times...

It's not quite at it's peak “yellow carpet” level yet, as it was when this shrine first appeared on my blog seven years ago in “Carpet of Yellow at the Iwato Ochiba Shrine, Deep in the Mountains of North-West Kyoto”, but it's still lovely.

In a single-frame re-enactment of this wigglegram from five years ago.

The hedge near the entrance is apparently made of various different plants that have different colors during this season, as seen here, so you get a lovely mix of colors...

We then moved over to the Soren-ji Temple (宗蓮寺), which was fantastic when we visited it five years ago, as seen in “A Few Pretty Pictures from Kyoto’s Middle-of-Nowhere Sourenji Temple” and “Kyoto’s Souren-ji Temple at f/1.2”.

This time it wasn't quite as good, perhaps because we were a bit early, but the little park nearby was wonderful.

The road up to the temple is narrow and steep (400m with an average grade of 11%). I've never ridden it, but I will soon. I made a Strava segment for it.

It was a nice start to the season.