Some friends and I paid a morning visit to the Rurikoin Temple (瑠璃光院) in north-east Kyoto on Thursday. It was my second visit, after the first two years ago when Damien introduced me to the place.

Two years ago it was probably about 500 yen (US $5) to get in, but I heard that they stopped being open to the public for a while. This year they're back, but it's 2,000 yen (US $20) to get in. It's a Buddhist Temple and so ostensibly a religious place (whose income is tax free), but during the fall-foliage season their business is [...]

I just happened to get lucky to catch these three Kyoto University students taking a selfie... it shows the fun of enjoying the season with friends (as I was doing at the time, temple hopping, camera in hand, with four friends).

As I mentioned in "Oppressive Crowds at the Shodensanso Villa" the other day, I paid my first visit to the "mountain cottage" Shodensanso (松殿山荘) this weekend. It's a half-hour drive south-east from my place in Kyoto, just over the border into Uji City.

From the makeshift parking area created for the special event, the path up to the villa looked like an empty river bed or canal.

Anyway, after coming up through the gate, one can approach the main house...

I didn't notice it at the time, but the lowermost tiles along the edge of the roof have the name [...]

(You can't tell in the wigglegram, but she was looking at a wonderful garden out in the bright sunlight.)

The peak of Kyoto's fall-foliage season is upon us, and today was likely the most crowded day the city has seen all year, if not all decade. It's the middle of a three-day weekend, and every hotel room is taken. (I know two people who wanted to visit Kyoto but couldn't get a hotel; one stayed 30km away in Osaka, and the other at our house.) The streets across the city were parking lots and the crowds were oppressive.

But not [...]

The other temple we visited on Tuesday's outing after the spectacular Yoshiminedera (seen here and here) is one known as the "Flower Temple" (hanadera -- 花寺), though its official name is the Shojiji Temple (勝持寺).

In any case, the thing seen above was sitting on the veranda of the main temple building. On the front in faded big characters is 「大原野」(Oharano), the name of the area.

On the side is a date: July 1889.

What is this 125-year-old thing?

As usual with my "What am I?" quizzes, I'll keep all comments from appearing until after I reveal the answer in [...]