As I wrote back in April's "An Amazing Day of Photography at Some Eastern-Kyoto Temples", I'd spent a wonderful morning wandering around an area of eastern Kyoto that I'd not visited before, with many temples and a bounty of spring blossoms and flowers. I did one followup post a couple of months ago, but much remains that I'd like to share.

Perhaps the largest temple complex I came across was that of the Sennyuji Temple (泉涌寺). It has many buildings separated by large expanses of gravel -- a decidedly non-spring feeling not made better by the weather, which was heavy [...]

Continuing with the series of photos from last month's Gion Matsuri festival in Kyoto (first seen in this post), here are some more photos from the third day I went out to the evening street festival...

The two colorful ladies were posing for a touristy-looking lady (seen at left). I'm not sure whether I'm more impressed by the shear volume of their hair, or their selection of shoes to accompany their traditional yukata: high-heel platforms for the one, purple Crocs for another.

The third day was by far the most packed with people, and it was a struggle to make [...]

I've been crazy busy lately with my Lightroom plugins, a transpacific flight (complicated by a back that went out 10 minutes before leaving for the airport :-(), visiting with family, and fending off jetlag. Posts will likely be sparse for a while.

It's been a while since I posted anything from the Uji mountain trips I made a couple of months ago. (The first trip produced a bunch of posts starting with "Exquisite Beauty Growing Like a Weed by the Side of the Road"; the second trip's posts started with "Pleasant Little Village in Uji".)

On that second trip, after [...]

In the few days that I've been clawing back from a nasty cold, a couple of folks that I chatted with during Kyoto's big Gion Matsuri festival last week have sent me copies of photos they took of me. As I described in "A Thin Slice of Big Crowds at Kyoto's Gion Matsuri Festival", I brought a small stool to raise me a bit above the considerable crowds, and with my Nikkor 300mm f/2 on a monopod, shot the festivities. I've much left to post, but ones already up include a bit from day 2, some from day 3, a [...]

So, the other day I posted one quick photo from one of the last major events of the month-long Gion Matsuri, Kyoto's biggest annual festival. I've picked a few more photos to share in this post.

The event has the name Shinkousai (祇園祭神幸祭), and I'd never heard of it before, and knew nothing about it other than "three tabernacle-like things are carried through the streets from the Yasaka Shrine, via different routes, to the corner of Shijo and Teramachi streets", and I saw map that indicated that the street would be closed for 15 minutes at the corner where Shijo [...]