Some friends are in town, and I joined them on a visit to the Fushimi Inari Shrine in south-west Kyoto this morning. I'd last visited three years ago (see "Kyoto's Dazzling Fushimi Inari Shrine", and followups here, here, and here), and it seems that much has changed since: it's undergoing a massive renovation.

The new paint was positively blinding in its richness, including the multi-colored detail seen in the first photo. I think I prefer the weather-beaten look that centuries tend to put on wooden structures, but the fresh-paint brilliance today was interesting and (for me so far) unique.

As [...]

I've been singularly uninspired to post lately, but had hoped that the typhoons I mentioned two weeks ago would create some dynamic weather, which might make for some interesting shots like this. It took a week before slow-moving Typhoon #12 ("Talas") arrived, but it veered west at the last minute and so unfortunately there wasn't much in the way of "interesting" in Kyoto. Even more unfortunately, there was way too much "interesting" in some areas 100 miles away where they got, literally, two feet of rain (24.5 inches) in 24 hours, and with it the accompanying flooding, landslides, and high [...]

These first two photos, from a side area at Kyoto's Sennyuji Temple, probably don't look like much in the thumbnails here on the blog, but clicking through to larger versions and they have a certain "presence", especially the first one. Or maybe it's just me, but I like them.

One side held a quaint little rest area...

The ceiling was woven (bamboo, I suppose)...

Wandering further around the fringes of the huge-but-ill-defined temple area, I came across a sub temple with a nice entrance garden...

One of its buildings has a wide veranda with a roof of exposed beams, that [...]

While everyone on the US Eastern seaboard is fretting about Hurricane Irene, two powerful hurricanes are bearing down on Japan, one of which is currently stronger than Irene with winds up to 55m/s (123 mph).

Judging from the plot shown on Yahoo! Japan's typhoon page, landfall for both looks uncomfortably close to our own; we arrive in Tokyo (after a 14-hour flight) on the afternoon of the 29th, then it's on to Osaka and home that evening. At least that's the plan. Here's keeping our fingers crossed....

The first photo in yesterday's "Roofs and Rock Gardens at Kyoto's Sennyuuji Temple", the first photo shows the view from the entrance that I'd happened upon as I'd wandered the general area. It turns out it was a small side entrance, with just a small hut with a fee-collecting monk inside. (The hut can be seen at the left of the first photo of that post.)

Above is a view of the entrance and the hut, both sitting under the sprawling canopy of a perfectly-shaped maple brimming with the vibrant green of spring. It was gorgeous (though looks like a [...]