So, last week with "Revisiting Imabari's Colorful Towel Museum" I was wrapping up a series of posts (part: one and two) about the oddly-interesting Towel Museum in Imabari, Japan, and I ended with a shot of the flowers on our table at the museum's cafe.

For context, here's our table...

... and here's the little shot-glass of flowers on the table...

But the little unassuming collection of flowers becomes great fodder for exploration with the creamy goodness of the Cosina Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5, so while waiting for our food, I took a few minutes to try different compositions. I was [...]

Moderating blog comments -- the triage to weed out spam and such before making submitted comments visible to the public -- can get complicated. Obvious spam is easy (delete it), as are obviously on-topic relevant personal comments without links (approve it). But there's a lot in between.

In particular, if there's a link you have to consider where it goes, and the commenter's purpose for including the link. On one end of the spectrum, spammers will just copy the text of a previously-approved comment and add a link to a site they're spamming for. Or someone will write something that [...]
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After picking up my new lens in Roppongi earlier this month, I thought I'd better nourish up before walking around for some big-lens street photography, and had the good fortune to walk into Le Grand Soir. The style was modern urban sophisticated (the chef used to work in Paris), but without any pretense or ostentation.

I had a lightly seasoned breaded chicken leg, and it was without question, by far... utterly in a class by itself... the best piece of chicken I have ever had. Anywhere. (Sorry Mom.)

Really, with food this good, there's no way to calculate "value", but [...]

Trying to catch up on so much I've fallen behind on recently, this post continues from "A Bit of Summer Volcano Skiing", from a short trip to northern Hyogo Prefecture at the start of the month. As you can see in the shot above, it was really hazy, but rather than humidity, it was from the kosa "yellow sand" that blows in from China sometimes (As I described in "Misty Evening in Rural Japan").

After the grass skiing, we thought we'd head up to the top of the short mountain (it rises only about 120m) to see the volcanic crater [...]

Yesterday we went with Fumie's folks for an early dinner at the Kiyamachi branch of Hiro (京の焼肉処 弘), a small upscale yakiniku restaurant, overlooking Kyoto's Kamogawa river.

From April to September, ninety or so restaurants along the river erect terraces over the small side river that parallels the larger Kamo river. It's quite nice if you're there early in the summer (no mosquitoes yet), and early in the evening (smokers haven't arrived yet).

The weather was wonderful and many people were enjoying the recently-relandscaped park between the stream and the river...

The dining over the river in this area has [...]