I still haven't gone through all my photos from yesterday's trip to the garden at Kyoto's Eikando Temple, but I wanted to show a few more, so here are some from the middle of the batch. Like yesterday's most of these are best appreciated with a large, wide-gamut monitor.

Continued here...

I visited today the Eikando Temple gardens, nestled in the base of the mountains at the far east of Kyoto, about a 15-minute walk from our place. I'd been there before and thought it was really pretty, but I must have been stupid or blind (or on parenting duty with an impatient kid to look after) because today it was FREAKING MIND-BLOWING AMAZING.

Just *WOW*.

My photos don't even come close to doing it justice.

The temple is famous for its fall colors, as I found out the first time I drove by during the proper season, posted in "Colorful [...]

The large rusty white sign above says "this is a national treasure; don't play inside" and the small one on the stone lantern says "don't touch" Yoshida shrine complex is full of signs with all manner of these kind of admonishments.... somewhat of a bummer.

So, on my short outing on Sunday morning to explore Mt. Yoshida, where I ended up finding the Yoshida Shrine nestled in the mountain, I had started at an ancillary shrine accessible by a small twisty road toward the south edge of the mountain, desirable as a starting spot due to its compelling attributes of [...]

While Anthony was at his swimming lesson last Sunday morning, I decided to kill the hour by scooting the kilometer over to Mt. Yoshida and poke around.

I "discovered" Mt. Yoshida when Stéphane Barbery (he of my earlier Jidai Matsuri festival photos and the wilting flower posts) introduced me to it back in April. At that time I got to visit only one small part; this time I wanted to visit the major shrine I knew to be there.... somewhere. Mt. Yoshida is a relatively small outcropping in the middle of town – about 35 acres, half the area of [...]

So after getting dressed up and then taking care of final preparations, we headed into the Heian Shrine for Anthony's shichi-go-san long-and-healthy-life blessing event.

Most people go in the small entrances on either side, but we thought to take a group photo in the exaggeratedly large main entrance (just out of frame to the left in the shot above), but it turns out that the only shot I got was the one that opens this post, with Anthony standing there looking out at the vast (and shockingly empty) courtyard.

It's the same courtyard where an annual festival has people throwing [...]