Picking up from part 1 and part 2 about my trip to the Housen-in Temple (宝泉院) in the Ohara mountain district of Kyoto last fall, we moved from the temple and its maple/moss garden, to a separate rock garden...

The weather alternated between light rain and brilliant sun... the gloominess seen above was suddenly replaced by intense sun, which lit up the moss and leaves near this gnarled (overly pruned) bush....

The tsukubai (water basin for ritual purification) is a particular focus point in this garden of many focus points...

It's a bit too much for my taste when viewed [...]

Picking up from "First Visit to Kyoto’s Housen-in Temple" the other day, where I ended with having tea and sweets in the garden-viewing room, here are some more shots of that room and the area.

The back of the room had some nice paintings in the alcoves...

In the shot above, Paul is facing the window seen in the opening shot, shooting the detail of the translucent opening above it. It's covered with thick Japanese paper, so he probably got a shot like this:

The full window looked like it should be very photogenic, but despite spending considerable effort on [...]

Dipping back into my largely-untapped archive from November's many fall-foliage outings, here are some photos from a trip to the Kyoto mountain-suburb of Ohara, where we (Damien Douxchamps, Paul Barr, and I) visited some of the smaller temples surrounding the justly-famous Sanzen-in temple (三千院), which has been on my blog many times since my first visit four years ago, including the bazillion offering statues and one of my all-time favorite photos, "Serenity".

But on this trip a few months ago, we avoided the oppressive crowds at Sanzen-in, instead letting Damien introduce us to the hidden-gem lesser temples dotting its perimeter.

I've been to the garden behind Nishimura Stone Lanterns (西村石灯籠) many times -- that link is just one of many posts; see the nearby photos link under any of these photos brings you to many more -- but yesterday was the first time in the snow. I posted a few moss/snow shots on my earlier post today.

There wasn't much snow, but enough to add just a touch of new character. I went with Zak Braverman and Nicolas Joannin...

For a few minutes the sun came out at the same time the snow got a little harder, and so I [...]

I'm adamant about keeping my blog content what  I  want to share; I hope others will happen to like it, of course, but I don't "pander for pageviews",* despite having been called an attention whore by a random Internet anonymous coward the other day. 🙂  So, I don't often pay much attention to my blog's pageview statistics, and I often go months without even seeing them, but I've looked at them this past week, and the results are interesting.

The photos on today's post, by the way, have nothing to do with the text; I just wanted to include some [...]