I'm exhausted after a long day of photography in north-east Kyoto, temple hopping with Damien Douxchamps visiting from Tsukuba (near Tokyo). Today's post is just a few quick pictures I picked out from two of the places.

I used the polarizer filter today quite a bit (with moss and the leaves), and tried the shot above with a polarizer, without a polarizer, and at half power, and found that it looked best without. Without the white sheen of the reflections in the lower half of the photo (something the polarizer was quite effective at removing), the tray with the tea [...]

妙法院（京都市東山区)の景色。この記事の写真は処理過剰ばっかりですが、今日はそんな気分です。 （今週は特別拝観が有ります。お寺の中は中々美しいですが、残念ながら中では撮影禁止）。

I paid my first visit to the Myouhouin Temple (妙法院) in eastern Kyoto yesterday. The buildings are closed to the public except for early November, so I took the opportunity to visit on the first day of this year's open house.

The good news is that the buildings and inner gardens and many artifacts on display were magnificently beautiful, but the bad news is that photography was not allowed at all. Still, well worth the ¥800 if you can get there before the open house ends on the 18th.

The first building you enter on the open-house [...]

Yesterday was a really blustery day, with cold, biting wind.... really the first true taste of autumn here in Kyoto. Made me want to peek at some of the many photos I haven't even look at yet from last year's fall-foliage season. Here are a few random photos from four separate outings with Paul Barr during the last week of November (last year).

From the same outing: "Some Rustic Temple/Shrine Visits in Western Kyoto" and a bunch of shots on "A Few Colorful Kyoto Desktop Backgrounds from November".

Yoshiminedera (善峯寺) is an autumn favorite. Shots from this particular outing appeared [...]

I've been missing the gluttonous excess of the now-closed all-you-can-eat/drink BBQ buffet that I posted about all summer, but perhaps found a kind of replacement: The all-you-can-eat/drink buffet at the Kyoto Royal Hotel, near Kyoto's Sanjo/Kawaramachi intersection.

I heard about it a couple of months ago, but didn't get a chance to try it until recently, to celebrate my father-in-law's birthday. I thought the food was very good, a real bargain at 2,500 yen. Add 500 yen, and you also get the alcohol bar... beer and wine (red/white/plum). Tasty.

It's particularly nice for me because I can walk there in [...]
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I posted a bit the other day (here and here) about catching the tail end of the Jidai Matsuri (時代祭, "Festival of the Ages"). Here are some more from early on in what I shot. (Having just returned from a long-weekend trip, I'm pretty much behind on everything.)

When I first got out there, the parade had stalled for some reason, so I got a long opportunity to photograph the mounted archer seen above and in the second link, and having not failed to immediately notice my not-so-subtle 300mm f/2, he pranced a bit for the camera, which I really [...]