Japanese temples generally have tiled roofs, with ornamental tiles of various sizes and meanings sprinkled liberally throughout. For example, the demon-face tile seen the other day on this post:

In Japanese these ornamental tiles are called onigawara (鬼 瓦) -- literally "demon tile" -- though the word is used for any complex decorative tile, with or without a demon. The English word "gargoyle" is often used for these; it's not really the right word, but it's evocative of the same concept, and I can't think of anything better.

Earlier in the summer I had a fantastic opportunity (more on that [...]

For the first time in ages, this evening we had a grill-at-your-table dinner at Yakiniku Nanzan (Hieidaira location).

I didn't have my camera with me, so I'm putting some photos from 2007 (seven years ago!) that I found in my image library.

We go in fits and spurts, but I think this might be the first time this year. It didn't disappoint.

I always order karubi (marinated short-rib beef), and today had six portions, which are described as for a single person but they're pretty small. It wasn't quite the gluttons affair of the now-closed all-you-can-eat beer/BBQ buffet that I [...]

I'm finally getting around to photos from last November, when old Yahoo co-worker Sergey Kolychev paid me a visit. (He's not old, our co-worker status is).

In the intervening three years since his prior visit he'd become fluent in Japanese to the point that he can read novels, which just blows my mind. Japanese is at least his fourth language (after Ukrainian, Russian, and English), so maybe they get easier as they stack up.

We packed quite a bit into one day. We started out with a visit to the Heian Shrine...

We then popped over to the Nanzen Temple...

Last fall I visited the Ginkakuji Temple (銀閣寺， the "silver pavilion") in north-east Kyoto. It's named for a building that was intended to be coated in silver leaf (comparable to how the golden pavilion is coated in gold leaf). Apparently they never got around to actually applying the silver, but the name stuck.

As it is today, the temple is noted for its sculptured sand, including a huge Mt. Fuji shaped cone.

The minor entrance stone garden is not particularly special, with similar features easily found at other temples. But the main garden raises the level considerably...

There's also a [...]

As I mentioned in the comments on last month's post about horrid watch-marketing copy, I've been looking for a nice watch with a combination of features and simplicity and size that no one seems to make. So after years of keeping my eye out, I finally decided that "perfect is the enemy of good enough" and went ahead and bought some cheap watches just to try.

I'm glad I did because I found out some new ways in which what you see in advertisements is not necessarily what you get, and I also found that what I though was important [...]