In the mountains of Northern Kyoto, after the stop along the logging road that produced last week's "Deep In The Mountains Above Kyoto's Kumogahata Village", we moved deeper in/up the mountains and eventually came upon our first "vista" with a distant view. It wasn't particularly magnificent by any stretch, but it was the first we'd seen so it was nice.

I knew instinctively that I'd not be able to capture the sense of depth and elevation, and I was correct...

The "tree in section" in the center of the photo is way below us down a steep slope, but the [...]

During yesterday's trip into the woods of northern Kyoto, we came across the remote Shimyouin Temple (志明院) at the end of a dead-end road that branches off from another dead-end road; in other words, it's remote.

As I wrote yesterday, I was with Paul Barr and Katsunori Shimada, and we were out on one of our photo expeditions, having spent the previous two Thursdays similarly occupied in Uji (as evidenced by many posts recent, such as this, this, this, and many more I've yet to write). We take a lot of photos among us because that's our main goal, yet [...]

As I mentioned in this morning's post, I went out today again with Shimada-san and Paul Barr on a photographic excursion in the mountains, this time to some remote mountains in northern Kyoto, a bit further north from the small village of Kumogahata. Our first stop was at a slightly wide enough point on a dead-end logging road that stabbed deep into the wilderness....

It was raining pretty much the whole time, which made for some inconvenience with the camera, but it sure made for lush green views.

Much of the area was unkept wilderness, with trees lying where they [...]

For the past two Thursdays I've headed out on photo expeditions to the twisty rural mountain roads of Uji City (southeast of Kyoto) with Shimada-san and Paul Barr. Today we'll switch it up and hit some mountain villages to the north of Kyoto, but I've still got so much from the earlier trips I want to post. Since we're leaving in a few minutes, I'll just post a few quick shots from the first trip, which has already yielded "Scenes From Rural Japan: Mountain Village in Uji City" and "Rural Uji's Kiyotakigyuu Shrine", among others...

While driving through a deeply-forested [...]

Fumie is in the thick for preparations for her fall ballet recital, but she took a rare day off on Sunday for an outing up to the Sanzen-in Temple (三千院), half an hour's drive to the mountains north-east of Kyoto. She particularly wanted to see the hydrangea they're somewhat known for, and since they were having a "hydrangea festival" (あじさい祭), the timing seemed fortuitous.

Anthony got a pre-visit snack of mitarash dango at a shop just outside the entrance...

He couldn't eat them all, but the sauce is a bit too sweet for my taste, so we formed a symbiotic [...]