In "Approaching the Shodensanso Villa" last week, we ended looking at the main entrance to the 86-year-old grand villa just outside of Kyoto. Here's a view from the entrance looking out.

We received a half-hour talk in this room about the history of the place and the guy who built it (Tsunetaro Takaya). The whole time I just couldn't stop marveling at the ceiling, whose 4-foot-by-4-foot panels were each a solid board...

After the lecture we were ushered to another room for, what turned out to be Tea Ceremony. For a bit I had the room mostly to myself...

At [...]

Two weeks ago toward the end of a full day of fall-foliage photography that I scratched the surface of in "The Whole Gamut of My Blog In One Spectacular Visit to the Yoshiminedera Temple", after a great lunch we made a short visit to Hanadera ("The Flower Temple", officially called the Shojiji Temple).

Didn't see too many flowers, being the middle of November and all, but the fall colors were starting to get going.

Here's a wigglegram to give a better sense of the area in front of the main building....

On the veranda of the main building is the [...]

Some friends and I paid a morning visit to the Rurikoin Temple (瑠璃光院) in north-east Kyoto on Thursday. It was my second visit, after the first two years ago when Damien introduced me to the place.

Two years ago it was probably about 500 yen (US $5) to get in, but I heard that they stopped being open to the public for a while. This year they're back, but it's 2,000 yen (US $20) to get in. It's a Buddhist Temple and so ostensibly a religious place (whose income is tax free), but during the fall-foliage season their business is [...]

I just happened to get lucky to catch these three Kyoto University students taking a selfie... it shows the fun of enjoying the season with friends (as I was doing at the time, temple hopping, camera in hand, with four friends).

As I mentioned in "Oppressive Crowds at the Shodensanso Villa" the other day, I paid my first visit to the "mountain cottage" Shodensanso (松殿山荘) this weekend. It's a half-hour drive south-east from my place in Kyoto, just over the border into Uji City.

From the makeshift parking area created for the special event, the path up to the villa looked like an empty river bed or canal.

Anyway, after coming up through the gate, one can approach the main house...

I didn't notice it at the time, but the lowermost tiles along the edge of the roof have the name [...]