Over the years I've posted many sunsets from the Shogunzuka Overlook (将軍塚) in eastern Kyoto, from spectacular to quiet but nice to the most common: downright bland. It's been a source of occasionally dynamic views for a long time, but the practical reality is that for every one time I show something from up there, I've visited and returned empty-handed many times.

Overall, the median experience is, basically, a waste of time.

I tend to keep track of the sky's potential for a nice sunset throughout the day, all while mentally juggling my schedule to see whether a trip up [...]

As I mentioned the other day, we made the hour drive from Kyoto to the mountains of Takatsuki to visit a small food/entertainment area where the main attraction for us was picking (then grilling then eating) shiitake mushrooms.

As one might expect, the mushroom area was like an old damp basement, but with more light...

There's a limit of five mushrooms per person, so you have to take care in how you select and pluck a mushroom, to maximize your take. If they were stuck together, they were considered one mushroom, so we tried to find groups.

They sell out [...]

We had a fun trip today to a small food/entertainment area in the mountains of northern Takatsuki City (高槻市), an hour or so west of Kyoto. The main objective that I'll post about another time (Update: here) was the picking of (and grilling of and eating) shiitake mushrooms (椎茸), but we also had fun at a play area that included a slide of rollers for 80m (260') down a hill.

UPDATE: for more information about visiting this slide, see this follow-up post.

It was wet and dirty, but YOLO, so we gave it a go.

I waited to catch Anthony [...]

Recent versions of Firefox inexplicably removed the ability to set a custom search engine, which one used to be able to do easily via the keyword.URL configuration. However, you can accomplish pretty much the same thing by installing a new search-engine profile that you craft yourself in an XML file.

Here's a sample profile file, for a custom Google search...

You'd copy this to an *.xml file and update the highlighted areas for your needs, adding/removing "ParamR 21; tags as appropriate for your search. (The "tbs" parameter in the example is the one that limits results to those updated in [...]
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The other day in "Getting Back Out with the Camera a Bit" I mentioned that I stopped by the famous Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社) on Miyajima Island (a bit south of Hiroshima, Japan). I arrived at sunset on a gloomy day that was already dark, and stayed for just half an hour.

Deer roam the area freely, and are quite docile. This is in stark contrast to Nara, where the deer are extremely aggressive, taking your food right out of your hand or shopping bag if you're not quick enough to protect it. I should write up a post about that.