I'm a big fan of the red berries that populate Kyoto's fall and winter, and of snow (well, at least so long as I don't have to drive), so it was a treat to get the combination today when we awoke to a nice few inches of snow.

The obligatory "snow views from the livingroom window" shots...

The sun was shining on the branches above, so they were starting to half melt, and so there were a lot of shiny/sparkley drops hanging from the branches. I don't think I captured it very well.

Before bringing Anthony to school, I checked [...]

While out with Anthony riding a bike yesterday, I took a few other random shots that seem interesting or pretty (at least, to me) that I'd like to share. These were all taken within 100 yards of each other, in the Okazaki area of Kyoto.

The main gate of the Heian Shrine has appeared on my blog a bazillion times – see the "related posts" box below for a few from the past year – but I'd never seen it from this angle (from its north-west). Anthony had ridden his back to a back parking lot of the Municipal library, [...]

Having grown up in Ohio – land of arctic winters and steam-bath summers – I learned to enjoy the change of seasons. I missed them when I lived in California, but Kyoto is better, with glorious springs and autumns. Kyoto's winter is short on snow and thus is fairly drab, so I'm excited whenever the forecast has any chance of snow in it. Sadly, nothing usually comes of it, so any flakes that do materialize are cause for enjoyment. I love snow so long as I don't have to drive in it, so I'm always wishing for more.

Yesterday mid-morning [...]

We moved to Japan in early April 2004, staying at Fumie's folks' place in Hirakata-city, an hour south of Kyoto. Fumie had arranged an apartment prior to arriving, so once we were over jet lag sufficiently to move, we started the process of building a new life.

This was prior to my having started a blog, but for the first couple of weeks I kept an "on-line diary", half for my family in The States to read, and half for my own memory. It apparently didn't work well for the latter goal, because I forgot about it until I ran [...]

You may recall (from my shrine-closing ceremony post last fall) photos of a Shinto rite of hope and good fortune of some sort, involving the burning of small sticks that had people's names and ages on them. As the sticks burned, the wishes and hopes of the person rose with the smoke (to the gods, I guess).

As I hinted with the Hot Stuff post the other day, this rite was done as part of the Setsubun events at the Heian Shrine.

At the shrine-closing ceremony, perhaps 60 sticks were burnt. At the Heian Shrine this past Sunday, about 40,000 [...]