A friend of mine collects Japanese swords. He doesn't have very many... five or six.. but makes up for lack of quantity with quality: each one is priceless (where "priceless" means "has a price, but it's much, much, much more than I could afford"). One is a designated "Japanese National Treasure".

I don't know much about Japanese swords, or swords of any type, and I'm not real keen on the whole concept of tools designed for killing, but I remember being impressed by a paragraph I read long ago in, I think, a Lonely Planet guide, describing the painstaking method [...]

I posted yesterday about Kyoto's Kamo River overflowing its banks. It's pretty mild flooding by many standards, but I thought I'd post some more photos for those who might know the area and find them interesting.

There are actually two rivers in the photo above, that rising waters have merged. For comparison, here's a shot from that side, but downriver a bit looking back up, showing the two rivers and why I caption it "Gathering Spot"...

In the "Gathering Spot" photo, there's a bit of blue almost directly in center frame. That's a "bib" (for lack of a better understanding [...]

We've had quite a bit of rain over the last couple of days, and the water flowing from the mountains has started to fill up the rivers just a bit. The water had subsided considerably by the time I ventured out late this morning, but it was still quite a sight to behold.

For comparison, here's a photo from a few years ago, almost exactly a reverse angle, taken from the bridge that you can barely see through the rain in the background of the photo above....

When I took the first photo, I was standing under the bridge seen [...]

After Anthony's stint in Appliance repair at our most recent visit to the most-excellent KidZania in Kobe, Japan, it was time to get busy putting out some fires.

Unlike the joyful high-five at the previous job the one here was mechanical. The girl doing the job was just that, going through the motions to do a job. Too bad... if she had the right attitude, both she and the kids would get so much more out of it.

Still, Anthony enjoyed it almost as much as the job he did next...

Continued here...

It's been months since I last wrote about our New Year trip to Toyama Prefecture, several hours' drive north from Kyoto. It was a pleasantly photogenic trip, yielding nice shots such as "Bridge Over Icy Water”, "Deceptively Clear: Snow-Covered Mountains in Exquisite Detail”, and "Snowy Mountains”, as well as visits to historic Shirakawago Village and Gokayama Village during a blizzard.

The story had ended with "Snowy New-Year Trip: Start of Day Three" and the start of a long walk that Anthony and I took, so that's where this post picks up....

You can see from the slope on either side [...]