A followup of sorts to a four-year-old post about a dumping ground in Kyoto for no-longer-sponsored temple monuments. Wandering through my photo archive, I came across this set and thought to post a few more from that outing...

There's a certain sadness about the whole place, but this kind of monument, of a history written in stone discarded halfway through, seems particularly forlorn. It chronicles deaths starting in 1919 with a 2-year-old girl, and ends in 83 years later 2002 with (I think) her sister-in-law (of sorts).

I'm probably totally misunderstand what I think I'm seeing, but it looks like [...]

Continuing the story about a day with friends in Kyoto last November that started with a morning visit to the Shugakuin Imperial Villa, after lunch we made our way to the Sento Imperial Palace, a small palace tucked away in a corner of the huge park that also houses the main Imperial Palace in Kyoto.

It was my first trip to this particular palace.

I include this photo mostly as an example of why one needs to be careful about using a polarizing filter with a wide-angle lens. I'd brought the filter along because it has such a dramatic [...]

Continuing the story of my last post, "Revisiting Kyoto’s Fall Colors: Shugakuin Imperial Villa Last November", on a day with friends last November in Kyoto, Japan filled with photographic delights, the story had ended with our finishing a visit to the Shugakuin Imperial Villa. We had some time before lunch, so we paid a quick visit to the Saginomori Shrine (鷺森神社).

A small wall has "wish plaques", where people write their wishes. Presumably, the shrine will burn them later in a ceremony (like this small ceremony, or this very large one).

People often wish for happiness or for health, but [...]

I guess this is a continuation of a post three months ago looking back to last November's trip to the Shugakuin Imperial Villa in Kyoto. We're still two months away from fall foliage season in Kyoto, but it's just around the corner for much of the Northern Hemisphere, so I guess this is a getting-in-the-mood-for-Autumn kind of post.

We'd left of on that previous post having headed up a hill to a nice view. The same view with an 85mm at f/1.6 sort of has a slightly-unreal look, as if it's a close up of a model...

As described in [...]

This won't mean a thing if you don't know this game, but if you do, I hope your jaw is suitably on the floor at that score.

When I still had the cold that I recently got over, I would sometimes pass the time playing the simple game "2048". I played on my phone, but anyone can play for free at the creator's website. It's fun and addictive.

During this sick time a game would last a few minutes, and I could get a score of about 2,000. Anthony and I had a running competition, and at first he could [...]