I made the mistake of having something shipped from The States to myself in Japan via Federal Express. FedEx has very un-Japanese (and hence horrible) service in Japan. My package cleared Japanese customs at about noon on Friday, and had I shipped with any other carrier I would have the package in my hands on Saturday. Yet here it is two days later and FedEx's tracking hasn't even updated. I called FedEx Japan, and they're closed!. "Call Back Monday".

I paid through the nose for the fastest shipment possible, only to find that I chose a lazy, clueless company. Sigh.

I had the pleasure on Wednesday to spend the day exploring temples with Stéphane Barbery, who introduced me to an area of Kyoto that I'd never visited: the environs of the Daitokuji Temple, an area with dozens of independent temples, often 400+ years old and related to the violent and tumultuous history of Japanese civil wars in the 1500s that eventually lead to the 250 years of peace that was the Tokugawa Shogunate. It's a sad badge of shame that I've lived in Kyoto for so long but had never been here. My only defense is that the Kyoto area [...]

I had a wonderful day today exploring some temples I'd never been to right here in Kyoto, about which I'll write more soon (here), but I thought I'd put this one up today. It's looking down a circular well at the Souken'in Temple (part of the Daitokuji temple complex) whose opening is framed by a box made of large stone slabs. It's more than 400 years old.

Peering in over the edge, it was pitch black with a small dab of light at the bottom (the reflection of the opening), so I guessed the depth, then focused at something about [...]

There was a short event at the Heian Shrine the other day that involved some 600 tai chi practitioners from around the country, doing a short routine at the shrine to, as it was told to me, show the gods their performance in the hope that it would please them.

Now that I think about it, I don't know of any other shrine that has a courtyard large enough to handle numbers like this.... it's a lot of people, so first they had to get them all in...

The young girl in kimono has probably just come from a shichi-go-san [...]

Two weeks ago I visited an ikebana (flower arranging) exhibition and posted some pictures of arrangements done by kids (aged about three to eight). Today I'll follow up with shots of a few of the many (100+?) other arrangements.

I wrote in that post two weeks ago the problems with photography at the event.... the backgrounds, the lighting, the positioning... all were elements that I couldn't control, and all were horrible from a photography point of view.

I'm about as uncultured a clod as you'll find, but even I could tell that the whole concept of an ikebana exhibition seems [...]