A friend of ours is a professional chef of the highest order (such that we can't possibly afford to eat at his restaurant), and today he unexpectedly gave us an amazing gift: two huge matsutake mushrooms.

Unlike the wild (and possibly poisonous) mushrooms we saw the other day, matsutake mushrooms are a rare delicacy, perhaps along the line of truffles in the west. Normally, they're tiny little stubs like those shown at right, which would take a good dozen just to cover the bottom of the basket we received.

Yet, even those little stubs are about $50 each, so [...]

It was raining off and on (mostly on) yesterday, but I accepted a kind invitation from Nils Ferry to visit his in-law's house in Kyoto's Miyagawa-cho district. It's the main center of Kyoto's geisha world, although lesser known than the nearby Gion nightlife area, which is both more famous and generally more picturesque.

(Gion has been featured a few times in my blog, with long-exposure cherry blossoms, and some regular night cherry blossoms, and a few pictures in one of the posts about my Aunt Jeannette.)

Gion is the area where they often work, but Miyagawa-cho is the main area [...]

Adding to yesterday's post about our trip to the fire pits on Mt. Daimonji, here are a few more of Anthony and Kana-chan.

As I mentioned yesterday, the view felt much closer than from the summit. Oddly, being lower/closer made the feeling of height more impressive.

Some were inspired to flight...

The lower-right "leg" of the "大" (as seen when facing the mountain) is very, very long -- about 140m of very narrow, tiny, steep steps -- so the view from near its top, just below the center of the character, is impressive.

Once back in the outer-edges of the [...]

Continuing with the ongoing set of posts on last fall's Mt. Daimonji hike, after having lunch at the top of the mountain, we headed down a bit to the Daimonji hidoko, the Daimonji fire pits.

The word "Daimonji" -- 大文字 -- literally means "big character," both in the lower-case opposite sense of "upper-case," and in the sense of "the Chinese character that conveys the meaning 'big'."

"Daimonji" is also the name of the mountain in Eastern Kyoto that has a big 150-meter-wide daimonji, 大, on it.

"Daimonji" is also the name of the festival held every year in August, in [...]

We've had several days of rain... it is the rainy season in Japan, after all... and this morning I noticed Aotan (a great blue heron living around here) sitting on a branch over the canal looking miserably wet. He was still there a half hour later, so I got out the camera (and the umbrella) for a picture.

I took a picture from a distance, then came to the closest point on shore. He was still quite a distance away (much further than the mere three feet that separated us the last time we met), so I was surprised when [...]