Archive for the 'Japan' Category

Posts relating to Japan and things Japanese

Unusually Dynamic Views of Kyoto from Shogunzuka

I mentioned in yesterday's post that the late-afternoon view was quite dynamic from eastern Kyoto's Shogunzuka Overlook, and I wasn't kidding. I'd never seen such a variety of conditions, much less over a mere hour and a half.

The view above is from when we got there an hour or so before sunset, toward Osaka. The air is crisp enough that you can see the picket-fence silhouette of Osaka's skyscrapers 30 miles away, yet somehow hazy enough in areas to be punctuated by colorful sunbeams. It was nice.

Yet, panning toward the right to look northwest instead of southwest, the [...]


View full post »
Bride at Sunset

I happened to walk up to the Shogunzuka Overlook in eastern Kyoto this afternoon with Paul Barr, enjoying quite the dynamic late-afternoon sun.

The sunset itself was nothing close to what I've been hoping for since the most amazing sunset I've ever seen, but it was still nicer than I've seen in a while, and certainly much nicer than a week ago.

But it became infinitely nicer when a young couple and their fun and boisterous entourage showed up for a pre-wedding photo shoot. Of course, Paul and I had to add to the shutter-click count, and as a bonus, [...]


View full post »
Not a Petroleum Refinery, Silly, it’s an Aquarium

That's the original of the made-to-look-like-night photo I posted my Dark, Moonless "What am I?" Quiz the other day. Seeing it in its full brightness doesn't make its purpose much more apparent, though.

I just could not figure it out, so I asked the staff at the hotel, who told me that it was a long-closed aquarium. How odd!

It looks like you can just walk onto it to explore, so I asked whether one can walk around, and was told yes, so after checking out, we took a stroll to investigate...

I wanted to see what the "tank" thing [...]


View full post »
My Day Walking Aimlessly in Kyoto

For some reason that I can't fathom at the moment, I let Zak Braverman talk me into taking a walk through Kyoto, ostensibly for some vaguely-defined health benefits. We were to meet at Kyoto Station and then walk the couple of miles to a restaurant for lunch, but I decided walk to the meeting point as well, and after adding a few things in the evening, ended up walking about 12 miles.

I brought the camera with me, of course, but since I'm not much into street photography, I didn't take all that many shots. (I made a post from [...]


View full post »
A Few Okay Shots From Last Year’s Visit To Kyoto’s Yoshiminedera Temple

I have no idea why I like this shot, but I did at first glance, and I still do, so here it is. It's one of the first shots I took on a visit to the most fabulous Yoshiminedera Temple (善峯寺) in southern Kyoto last year, with Paul Barr. (As an aside, Paul is likely at this very moment on a flight from The States to make another visit this year, but that's a post for next week).

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in "Kyoto Fall-Color Preview With Impact: Impressionism in Lightroom", I found thousands of photos [...]


View full post »