This is turning into a spectacular week of exploration and discovery. On Monday I spent the day scootering in the mountains to the south-east of Kyoto, discovering an amazing temple and other photogenic delights I've yet to find time to post about. (I did post about some tiny bridges that were a bit geometric, but otherwise not too interesting.) Then yesterday I tag along with Stéphane Barbery to the amazing Kongourinji Temple (金剛輪寺) an hour away in Shiga, and I came back with 619 photos, mostly amazing and also now in the queue for posting. On the way home yesterday, [...]

The guy in the photo above was finishing his 8th trip from the bottom, a round trip that takes about 8 minutes. He told me that he intended to do ten round trips, but said it in a way that implied that he knew he'd never make it.

I was in north-east Kyoto this morning to pick up a cake for Fumie's dad's birthday, at a shop that sells a Japanified green-tea tiramisu. Scouting the location on Google Maps I noticed that the road it was on wound up into the mountains, ending at a temple, so I popped over [...]

I had the pleasure on Wednesday to spend the day exploring temples with Stéphane Barbery, who introduced me to an area of Kyoto that I'd never visited: the environs of the Daitokuji Temple, an area with dozens of independent temples, often 400+ years old and related to the violent and tumultuous history of Japanese civil wars in the 1500s that eventually lead to the 250 years of peace that was the Tokugawa Shogunate. It's a sad badge of shame that I've lived in Kyoto for so long but had never been here. My only defense is that the Kyoto area [...]

I had a wonderful day today exploring some temples I'd never been to right here in Kyoto, about which I'll write more soon (here), but I thought I'd put this one up today. It's looking down a circular well at the Souken'in Temple (part of the Daitokuji temple complex) whose opening is framed by a box made of large stone slabs. It's more than 400 years old.

Peering in over the edge, it was pitch black with a small dab of light at the bottom (the reflection of the opening), so I guessed the depth, then focused at something about [...]

There was a short event at the Heian Shrine the other day that involved some 600 tai chi practitioners from around the country, doing a short routine at the shrine to, as it was told to me, show the gods their performance in the hope that it would please them.

Now that I think about it, I don't know of any other shrine that has a courtyard large enough to handle numbers like this.... it's a lot of people, so first they had to get them all in...

The young girl in kimono has probably just come from a shichi-go-san [...]