My cold definitely seems to be over, so today I made the trek to the deep-mountain southwest corner of Kyoto City, to the Yoshiminedera Temple (善峯寺) that Stéphane Barbery introduced me to last year. I made two trips last year, producing enough story and photographic material to fill dozens of blog posts, but being lazy I've so far posted only a few (here, here, and most recently here).

Arriving today with Paul Barr after an hour-long scooter ride, and getting the first view of the entrance seen above, I was struck by three things:

The fall colors are much weaker [...]
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Having recovered from a mild but lingering cold, I went out for some lite temple/shrine exploration in western Kyoto with Paul Barr yesterday. The autumn colors are late and weak this year, but it's always fun to explore new nooks and crannies of Kyoto, so I enjoyed it.

There's a tradition of sake (rice wine) companies sending donations to shrines in exchange for prominent display of their patronage, and the barrels on display at this particular shrine we came across were particularly large.

It's the season for children's "7-5-3" celebrations (as described here, and as seen with my own kid [...]

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I mentioned in yesterday's post that the late-afternoon view was quite dynamic from eastern Kyoto's Shogunzuka Overlook, and I wasn't kidding. I'd never seen such a variety of conditions, much less over a mere hour and a half.

The view above is from when we got there an hour or so before sunset, toward Osaka. The air is crisp enough that you can see the picket-fence silhouette of Osaka's skyscrapers 30 miles away, yet somehow hazy enough in areas to be punctuated by colorful sunbeams. It was nice.

Yet, panning toward the right to look northwest instead of southwest, the [...]

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I happened to walk up to the Shogunzuka Overlook in eastern Kyoto this afternoon with Paul Barr, enjoying quite the dynamic late-afternoon sun.

The sunset itself was nothing close to what I've been hoping for since the most amazing sunset I've ever seen, but it was still nicer than I've seen in a while, and certainly much nicer than a week ago.

But it became infinitely nicer when a young couple and their fun and boisterous entourage showed up for a pre-wedding photo shoot. Of course, Paul and I had to add to the shutter-click count, and as a bonus, [...]

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That's the original of the made-to-look-like-night photo I posted my Dark, Moonless "What am I?" Quiz the other day. Seeing it in its full brightness doesn't make its purpose much more apparent, though.

I just could not figure it out, so I asked the staff at the hotel, who told me that it was a long-closed aquarium. How odd!

It looks like you can just walk onto it to explore, so I asked whether one can walk around, and was told yes, so after checking out, we took a stroll to investigate...

I wanted to see what the "tank" thing [...]

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