I made the 10-minute scooter ride this morning to Kyoto's Yamashina Ward, to explore what I thought was a mountain road that I discovered yesterday with Google Earth. Sadly, it turns out that the road is not open to the public. Still, I came away with a few nice shots from the mountain-village area just prior to the gate.

This is all very close to the concrete jungle that is Kyoto... perhaps half a mile (it's two miles from my place), but as I've mentioned so many times (especially here), once you get into the mountains, you feel like the [...]

I was at Arthur's house today helping out a bit with his remodel, and couldn't help but notice how lovely an effect the crumpled leaves made as they surrounded the stepping-stones in his garden.

The leaves came from this tree, now mostly devoid of color or leaves...

For reference, here's what they looked like 10 days ago, as they were approaching full color...

I also had some shots at full color, from a week ago, but I seemed to have deleted them by accident during a dyslexic moment when I zero-filled the wrong memory card. Doh!.

On our trip to Takamatsu this time last year for a concert, we drove across the Akashi Straights Bridge (明石海峡大橋), which, with a main span of almost 2km long, is the longest suspension bridge in the world. The whole bridge itself is 3,911 meters long.

A mile or so past the southern end is a big parking area with shops, a little park, and (of all things) a Ferris wheel ("the largest at a highway rest stop in Japan, if not the world").

There's also a section of the main suspension cable on display...

Just looking at the steel wire [...]

The last time I posted a picture of a burnt wall, it was due to an unfortunate fire that destroyed a nearby restaurant. This time is a bit different.

The quietly famous Murin'an Garden (無鄰菴) near my house in Kyoto has outside walls that are quite varied and interesting. Some of them, such as those shown above, are wood whose top surface has been burnt to charcoal. Looking at a view showing the wall in situ you can see that the burning is clearly purposeful..

While it's clear that the wood has been burnt intentionally, the reason is not clear. [...]

Here are some more shots from the outing up to Shogunzuka that I posted about last weekend....

Inside, a plaque describing the area...

Looking a bit toward the left...

While back at the park overlook....

But...