The other day after a short stroll through the Chishaku-in Temple in eastern Kyoto, we made our way behind it to search for a set of stairs that Stéphane had suggested. We found it.

At the top of the small set of steps was a park with cherry blossoms and kids playing, beyond which was a large wooden gate building...

Paying a scant 50 yen (US$ 0.60) to pass through, we found the main set of stairs....

Just as we started up, someone came to jog the stairs, reminding me of north-east Kyoto's Tanukitanisan Fudouin Temple where athletes train by [...]

Today I visited eastern Kyoto's Chishaku-in Temple (智積院) with Paul Barr and Nicolas Joannin. I'd driven by its large temple grounds hundreds of times, but had never stopped in, and perhaps couldn't have picked a better day. It was the first short-sleeve day of the year, and the open grounds were dotted with all kinds of blossoming trees...

To be continued...

I recently had the pleasure to tour Suntory's "Yamazaki" whisky distillery, 20 minutes by train south of Kyoto. Dating from 1923, it's the oldest whisky distillery in Japan. (Wikipedia - home page)

Suntory uses the British "Whisky" spelling, rather than the Irish/American "Whiskey", so I'll do the same in this post.

20 years ago I used to drive by the front gates every day on my commute to and from work, and the smell was amazing. I'm not a particular fan of whisky's taste, but the smell of it being produced is rich and heavenly, and those few seconds driving [...]

There were plenty of folks enjoying the blossoms, but it was quiet and relaxed, nothing at all like the ugly, disgusting spectacle you so often find (that I wrote about seven years ago in "The Ugliness of Japanese Cherry-Blossom Viewing"). It wasn't even like "Cherry-Blossom Joie de Vivre in Kyoto". It was just a normal (chilly) Sunday afternoon in the park with kids playing and folks jogging, but with a quiet floral bonus for those who happened by.

Anyway, the photo above is horrible from a photographic sense, but I like the mood.

I was playing catch with Anthony and [...]

I love April-Fool's jokes.

I don't care so much for ones played on me by someone I don't know, by a source I don't trust. No, it's best when it's a friend or trusted source, when the joke is so good that I actually regret having given them my trust. Yes, the satisfaction you feel when you make me regret having trusted you..... well, jokes just don't get better than that, now do they?

One of the best ever was back in 1998, when I'd been working for Yahoo! for a year. This was near the beginning of Yahoo!'s great [...]
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