Picking up from yesterday's "Rediscovering Kyoto’s Chion’in Temple via a Short Mountain Hike", where I had descended on a mountain trail into a back area of the Chion'in Temple that I hadn't known existed. Yesterday's post ended with me getting to the main area I'd always known about...

I'd seen this area briefly last year, at the end of the roof-repair visit, when it was lit up for an evening lightup event. Here's a photo from Nov 2, 2013:

(A similar shot appeared late last year as decoration on a post about Garmin's horrible products.)

At that time the area [...]

It's been a month since I sprained my ankle while on a mountain hike. It's been feeling mostly better for a while, so I finally decided to do a short hike up to the Shogunzuka overlook just to test things out.

The hike is very simple (I've done it with a five-year-old in tow), and from home it took only 10 minutes to the trailhead, and from there 20 minutes up.

It was a splendid day, but the view from the top was hazy and dull...

The plane in the distance is Jetstar 615, half way on its run from [...]

Still revisiting autumns past while we wait for the fall-foliage season to start here in Kyoto, here are some genial little men at the Sekisanzen-in Temple in north-east Kyoto.

I'm not sure what they're for, but I suspect they represent votive donations, such as these statuettes at the Sanzen-in Temple.

I stopped by with Damien prior to my first visit to Kyoto’s Shugakuin Imperial Villa two years ago, because we had a few extra minutes and it's nearby.

The affable men were in front of a little sub building on the temple grounds...

Though this was a short visit, photos [...]

A couple of weeks ago during a scooter ride around western Kyoto, I came across a temple that I recalled having visited a couple of years ago. Its entrance path is quite nice.

Here's how it looked two weeks ago:

I'll have to visit again in a month when the colors are hitting their peak, but until then, here are some more views from Dec 1, 2012:

The smudge of red reveals who joined me on that visit. It was the same trip two years ago with the intense rainbow over Arashiyama a pretty path, a bunch of whimsical carvings, [...]

During past weekend's trip to Miyajima Island, the impending typhoon brought back memories of my first trip to the island, in 1989 after having been in Japan for only a month. A friend at work (Andy Krantz) had a nice trip planned for the week-long Obon holidays the country takes every August, and kindly invited me along. On this trip we stopped by Miyajima Island, which I knew nothing about (at the time I knew nothing about Japan except Perl Harbor and Sony).

On that visit I certainly would have seen the famous shrine gate, but I don't remember it [...]