Trying to catch up on so much I've fallen behind on recently, this post continues from "A Bit of Summer Volcano Skiing", from a short trip to northern Hyogo Prefecture at the start of the month. As you can see in the shot above, it was really hazy, but rather than humidity, it was from the kosa "yellow sand" that blows in from China sometimes (As I described in "Misty Evening in Rural Japan").

After the grass skiing, we thought we'd head up to the top of the short mountain (it rises only about 120m) to see the volcanic crater [...]

Yesterday we went with Fumie's folks for an early dinner at the Kiyamachi branch of Hiro (京の焼肉処 弘), a small upscale yakiniku restaurant, overlooking Kyoto's Kamogawa river.

From April to September, ninety or so restaurants along the river erect terraces over the small side river that parallels the larger Kamo river. It's quite nice if you're there early in the summer (no mosquitoes yet), and early in the evening (smokers haven't arrived yet).

The weather was wonderful and many people were enjoying the recently-relandscaped park between the stream and the river...

The dining over the river in this area has [...]

It's not that I don't have enough recent stuff that I'm behind on to post about, but I thought it'd be a nice change of pace to jump back half a year to when the fall foliage first started showing its colors in the area, to a November 9th visit to the Kongourinji Temple (金剛輪寺) in Shiga, an hour's drive from Kyoto. This is the same temple featured in "Deep Sorrow at the Kongourinji Temple's Path of Jizou", about the many bibbed statues representing children who died before their parents.

The fall colors don't arrive in full force this area [...]

Here are a few random pictures from the colorful Towel Museum in Imabari Japan, which I covered in a couple of posts last month (part one and part two). The towel giraffe above is a smaller version of the one Anthony is hugging in this photo from part one.

The displays of wares for sale at the many shops were always colorful...

I was thinking of using this picture as one of my "What am I?" quizzes, but it's probably not challenging enough, so I'll just post it here, and the answer follows later in this post.

The big wall [...]

While in Pierre Nadeau's smithy that I wrote about yesterday, I noticed this odd-looking tool lying around, and like many of the odd-looking things lying around the 100-year-old workshop, I had no clue what it was (unlike the majority who answered the "What am I?" quiz correctly the other day).

When I asked Pierre about it, he demonstrated that it conditions a grinding wheel used for sharpening knives and the like. I don't think he uses it when he makes swords, but he also makes various tools on order, so I'm sure his grinding wheel gets a lot of use.