Sorry for the recent dearth of new content... I've been feeling remarkably unmotivated. At least I'm finally getting around to writing this post, which I've been wanting to do for the last three months.

Every year in March, just before cherry-blossom season, the Higashiyama area of Kyoto has a light-up event. I first blogged about it nine years ago, and again three years ago. This year I took a lazy stroll with some friends and a tripod, snapping some photos along the way.

It was dark so I was taking these with a tripod, and the light would change considerably [...]

What an ordeal. I spent almost eight hours at a SoftBank mobile-phone store today, trying to get some new phones set up. I have the phones in hand, but I'm still only halfway there.

The two-year contract for my and my son's iPhones is up for renewal this month. We've been with provider Docomo, and if we stick with them for a two-year renewal, our thanks is a 60% price increase(!) So, I'm moving to SoftBank, where for the same price we would have had for our two old phones, we get upgraded to the latest iPhones, and also add [...]

The second stage of the eight-stage Tour of Japan was held yesterday in southern Kyoto Prefecture, a ways south of Kyoto City. I was a volunteer to help in crowd management, as part of an effort to supplement the various civic and government groups with cycling-specific knowledge (e.g. to be able to foresee what lines the cyclists would take, to predict where spectators would be especially dangerous, etc.)

I wasn't there to spectate or take photos, but I could do both when I wasn't otherwise occupied. It's my second cycling race to see live, the first having been amateur races [...]

This post picks up on last month's "Century of Wazuka Climbs, Part 1", about what was for me an epic day of beauty and climbing, and some trials and tribulations. "Part 1" ended with a delicious lunch, so this part picks up from just after.

So, after lunch, I made my way south to the deeper, even-less populated mountains of the Wazuka region of southern Kyoto Prefecture.

I thought that I had posted these guys before, but it seems that I didn't. It's the same intersection as this photo from "Tea Tour with Manseki and Gorm" last year.

This mild [...]

My, how time flies. I took this wigglegram in 2014, which surprises me because it doesn't feel like I've been doing them nearly that long. Last year I posted another wigglegram from the same outing, in "A Couple of Autumn Wigglegrams for My Niece Jena".

I had briefly touched on the outing in "A Quick Peek at Kyoto’s Hanadera Temple", which itself has a wigglegram, so I guess I was in the mood that day.

This temple is wonderful to visit, but it's difficult to get to by public transport. I'm more likely to bicycle by, as it's near the [...]