A mokugyou (literally "Wooden Fish") is a hollow musical instrument carved out of a single piece of wood. They can range in size from fairly small walnuts, to the size seen in the photo above, the largest mokugyou in the world. The sound is appreciably deep.

A mokugyou is often used in Buddhist rites, such as seen in this photo from one of the funeral rites of Fumie's grandmother, two and a half years ago. The photos on this page are at the Youkouji Temple (永興寺), taken after the follow-on funeral rite seen in Kotsuiri -- "Placing of the Bones", [...]

During a stop at an ocean-side park during our short May trip down to Awaji Island a couple of hours from Kyoto by car, I came across a rack of filled with trays of cruncy snacks waiting for hungry customers.

Let's take a closer look...

Each skewer of a dozen fish sells for about US$4.

(There are about $2,000 worth of fish in this rack, in case you're really hungry.)

The geometric nature of the display garnered a spot on my earlier "Geometric Awaji" post.

Just under three months ago, I ended my "Snowy New Year Trip Day Three: Dam Snow" post with the photo above, and a note that I hoped it would not take three months for the followup. Looks like I just made it under the wire.

We'd taken a walk during a heavy snow from our lodge (seen here) to the Komaki Dam (seen in the background behind Anthony in this picture; Wikipedia entry). This post picks up from when we arrived at the east side of the dam, and started walking across it.

The photo above doesn't look much like [...]

Earlier in the year I wrote a few posts about a restaurant/cafe with large private grounds called Sunainosato (寿長生の郷) in Shiga prefecture, about an hour's drive from Kyoto. The expansive grounds are open to the public, and are quite pretty.

A photo of an actual jump did appear on the previous post in this series, and I like it a lot even though his head's cut off.

Also, this was about the time that I got the photo featured in "Anthony Growing Up: the Tipping Point"

After lunch it was time to explore more of the grounds...

Yesterday we went for a short drive in the northern mountains of Kyoto to visit the Jakkoin Temple (寂光院). First we had lunch at a nearby restaurant, and Anthony made the picture of a little Japanese kid drawing in his notebook while we were waiting for our order...

Across the street from the restaurant was what I thought was the photogenic entrance to the temple, but it turns out the temple entrance was one door down...

I didn't realize it at the time, but the iron lantern was given to the temple by a man who died in 1598. The [...]