I went with a friend to the Shoseien Temple (渉成園) today, in downtown Kyoto Japan. It's a little osasis on what must have been the outskirt boonies of Kyoto 360 years ago when it was started, but now it's in the middle of the city, a short walk from Kyoto Station.

It's got quite a different vibe than your average temple; here, they embrace being rustic, but always with class. It's nice.

I haven't really looked at my photos yet, but I'm sure I'll post more once I do.

It must have been painful for the owners during the last [...]

I mentioned the other day in a post about a minor heart episode that a local restaurant, Togiya, serves Prucia, a plum wine (umeshu -- 梅酒) from France. I'd never seen a plum wine from outside Japan.

Well, in the store the other day to pick up some of the fiesta-in-a-bottle Sangria Peñasol that I mentioned in last month's "A Bunch Of Blurry Pictures of Folks Pouring Wine", to my surprise I came across a bottle of Prucia on the shelf. In the name of research and public service, I brought it home with me.

I've shown great restraint in [...]

Earlier this month I told my tale of out-of-shape hiking woe in "Yesterday’s Hike: The Agony Where Bravado Yields, In Spectacular Fashion, To Painful Reality". The trip up the mountain was, if you'll excuse the pun, an exercise in pain, but the trip down was a breeze, as I availed myself of a cable car that heads straight up/down the mountain.

In the Japanese vernacular, a "cable car" is a train pulled by a cable. From where that ends near the top, a "ropeway" (as seen above) can bring you the rest of the short distance to the top. The [...]

This post shows some example effects of a polarizer filter on vegetation, specifically, the moss and fern laden garden of the Gioji Temple in Kyoto, Japan (祇王寺). On the topic of polarizers it follows from "A Few Polarization-Filter Examples" where I first brought up the topic four years ago, and the fall-foliage followup last year: "Heading Out To Photograph The Fall Foliage? Don’t Forget The Polarizer Filter".

On the topic if the Gioji Temple, this post follows from yesterday's "Gioji Temple Photo Shoot: Nicolas's White Little Mushrooms" and the slightly earlier "Tag Along With Me on a Photo Shoot at [...]

Picking up from where "Tag Along With Me on a Photo Shoot at Kyoto’s Gioji Temple" left off, after the initial moss shots, I turned to the thatched roof of a small gate.

The first photo is looking up the slant to the reeds making the top layer of the roof.

Here's looking at the evenly-sliced bottom face, which perhaps would be considered the eaves if there were walls...

Nearby a set of ferns seems to be springing from the base of a tree and have a real "presence" (I'm not sure what that even means for a plant), but [...]