It's not that I don't have enough recent stuff that I'm behind on to post about, but I thought it'd be a nice change of pace to jump back half a year to when the fall foliage first started showing its colors in the area, to a November 9th visit to the Kongourinji Temple (金剛輪寺) in Shiga, an hour's drive from Kyoto. This is the same temple featured in "Deep Sorrow at the Kongourinji Temple's Path of Jizou", about the many bibbed statues representing children who died before their parents.

The fall colors don't arrive in full force this area [...]

I often make the short drive up to the Shogunzuka overlook to catch the sunset or just enjoy the nice view, but it's usually to the public overlook, and only a few times to the actual Shogunzuka gardens next door (500 yen to enter... about $6). I should go more, because it's quite pretty in its own right, and the views are wonderful. Last time I went was about two years ago when my friend Ram was in town. I went today, and though it was quite pretty, you could definitely tell it was two weeks deeper into spring than [...]

This post is a continuation of "Revisiting the Road to Imabari: Stops #1 and #2", which itself follows on from "On The Road to Imabari", about the first day of our short trip to Imabari (Ehime, Japan) earlier this month.

However, unlike the two earlier posts which sported all kids of pretty photos, including ten that I thought were good enough to present as desktop backgrounds, this post has pretty much nothing but photographically-atrocious images. But since my blog is a "stuff I want to share" blog, and not a photo blog, I have no qualms posting bad photos if [...]

What a week it's been. I took more photos today than in the first three months of the year combined, and this is after a ramp-up in activity at the start of the month due to the cherry blossoms and then a highly photogenic three day family trip followed by a fun photographically-friendly play date for Anthony. Suffice to say I've built up a new backlog on top of my old one, but it's sure a nice problem to have.

So today I went to the preschool/kindergarten entrance ceremony for my friend Britto's boy, to snap some photos..... he's an [...]

Anthony started third grade this morning, which means that we had one free day yesterday after our recent short trip to Imabari, so we paid a visit to his kindergarten friend, Monet, who also starts third grade, but at a different school. Monet's sister, May, starts first grade tomorrow.

We all then took a walk through the woods to the next village down the mountain, to visit one of Monet's current school friends.

The first stop along the way was a check to see whether a tepee that Arthur had started to make with Monet and May last fall had [...]