Yesterday I posted about a bird feeding frenzy at the Kamo river in Kyoto, brought about by a couple with a big box of bread. Today's post is a sequence of nine shots of one event, spanning 11½ seconds....

The kite (hawk-like bird of prey mentioned yesterday) looks as if it tried to grab something from the water, but came up empty handed. But just after this shot, a hunk of bread landed in front of the gulls...

I'll take the opportunity to point out again as I did yesterday that this was all manual-focus work. I'm really happy with [...]

I've been busy with a project lately (which explains the lack of posts lately), but took the opportunity of having lunch in town with Zak to enjoy the walk from home. Crossing the Kamo River on the Nijo-Street bridge on the way home, I noticed that the mountains were still blustery from a snowfall we had last night, though it was mostly clear and sunny in town.

I noticed a lone heron was standing in the water near the bridge, while a big frenzy of birds jostled for bread near some people on a sand bar further up river. Not [...]

We took a short trip in the closing days of the year to Shoudoshima Island a few hours southwest of Kyoto (2.5 hours by car to Himeji, followed by two hours on a ferry). It's a small island (about 12 miles × 6 miles) in the Seto Inland Sea, west of the Awaji Island that we visit from time to time. Shoudoshima is known mostly for being the only place in Japan where olives are grown. It's extremely mountainous with the vast majority of its meager population sprinkled around the edges.

Considering its "near nowhere" location, our hotel was the [...]

Posting about Christmas now is a bit late, but I'm still trying to recover after watching the last week of the year evaporate, so here we are.

We started things off with a present from my folks for Anthony, which turned out to be a little Curious George ornament in which George is reading a George-related Christmas book.

It turns out that we actually own the George book featured in the little ornament, so I tried to grab a quick snap of the two, but it was difficult to zoom up close enough to make the page in the ornament [...]

On January 1st, we made a visit to the Heian Shrine for hatsumode, a ritualistic "first visit to a shrine in the new year" that's a religious experience for some, but a cultural event for all. The shrine was open all night, but even at noon it was still crowded...

(The shot above was taken from under the big orange shrine gate that straddles the road... view the "nearby photos" link under the pic to see area views.)

Inside the shrine courtyard there was a long line waiting to get in...

The line looks long, but it moved briskly and [...]