So, unlike yesterday's gloom and rain, today was clear and sunny. The cherry blossoms are not yet near full, and they don't seem to be particularly good this year anyway (we had an extended cold snap just as they were starting to blossom, which seems to have messed them up in varying ways), but nevertheless, I took the tripod and headed out for the last evening of the local cherry-blossom lightup.

Last year I took shots from closer to my place, but this year I wanted to try the long view, from where the canal bends, so I made the [...]

The shot above is pretty horrendous, of course, but that's expected at 1/6th second handheld, freestanding, while on a bridge that quivers as people and vehicles pass. It pretty much reflects the mood for the cherry blossoms in Kyoto this year.

We were on track for a slightly early season, but just after some of the trees started to flower, we were hit with a long cold snap that continues, so the blossoms have been struggling. The cherry-blossom lightup that my area of Kyoto holds every year is scheduled for just three days this year (yesterday, today, and tomorrow), but [...]

When I posted yesterday's "What am I?" quiz, I did so thinking that the answer was "parts of a pine cone", and I suspected regex.info's resident botanist ("Peter, in Wales") would provide that answer. Indeed, he provided the correct answer, as did Alexander before him and Earnest after, but it turns out that I would have been wrong because the photo does not show parts of a pine cone, but rather of a fir cone. I had never heard of such a thing.

The cones are made up of scales, and it seems that they shed off while still on [...]

This year's cherry blossom season in Kyoto is turning out quite odd, or, at least it seem so to my limited experience. Last week, matching up how the blossoms were shaping up compared to how they were in the month-long cherry-blossom timelapse I posted last year, it seemed that this year was a couple of days ahead, and indeed, one of the trees outside my window is getting full of blossoms.

But I was out and about quite a bit today, and from what I could tell, most trees were nowhere near as far along. Some trees had no blossoms [...]

So, finishing up from yesterday's post about our fun day on nearby Yabasekihantou Island, after the obstacle-course play area, Anthony headed over to a big rope-climbing thing...

I took the shot above thinking it'd make a great opening for a post, but I ended up liking the impact of the almost-hidden feet hanging out, so chose that one to open with instead.

When he came down, he ended up sitting on a rope with nothing under for quite a while, and he wasn't sure how to get down. So I told him to lean forward and grab the rope in [...]