The day I got back from camping, Fumie happened to hear from a taxi driver about a small out-of-the-way shrine not too far away that had a nice bloom of wisteria (or fuji – 藤 – in Japanese), so yesterday afternoon we made the 45 minute drive to Sandai Temple in Kusatsu to check it out.

I guess wisteria is normally a climbing plant, but here they have them dangling from horizontal trellises. They were mostly purple/lavender, but there were some light pink ones as well.

There were a lot of big bumblebees among the flowers (two can be seen [...]

Since we still don't have any cherry blossoms yet, at least in my part of Kyoto (although the first ones should start popping out soon), I'll finish up with the pics from yesterday's trip to see what remains of the plum blossoms at the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine.

Yesterday's pictures were from the free areas of the shrine. It costs 600 yen (about six bucks) to visit the gardens, although that includes a bit of plum tea and some crackers. The garden has two parts, a lower part split by a little stream, and an upper plum orchard.

The trees were [...]

After Easter mass, we made the 15-minute drive over to Kitano Tenmangu, a Shinto shrine in north-west Kyoto that dates from 947, famous for its pink and white plum blossoms. It was my first visit.

We didn't realize just how past their prime the plum blossoms were: the trees were mostly bare. I see now that they have their plum-blossom festival in late February, so we're a month late to the party.

Still, there were a few bunches of blossoms here and there, in deep pink, bleached white, and various colors in between.

I'm sure it's breathtakingly spectacular during full [...]

I went out again to the Kyoto Higashiyama "Hanatoro" Lightup event last night. The word "Hanatoro" is made from the characters for "flower", "lantern", and "road". The event had plenty of them all.

I used a tripod for all my shots, with shutter speeds ranging from half a second up to 30 seconds.

The cherry tree above is perhaps the most famous in Kyoto, although here its branches are still bare. In a couple of weeks it will be breathtaking, although sadly, you won't be able to enjoy it then unless you like loud, drunk, smoking hordes.

The big five-story [...]

A preface to today's post: I have two monitors, one that's really good (a mid-level Eizo LCD), and one that's on the high end of normal (a Dell LCD). The intense colors of the cranes make today's pictures look amazing on the Eizo, but they're utterly bland and pedestrian on the more consumer-oriented monitor. Oh well.

As I mentioned the other day, we recently made a trip to the Tanigumisan Kegonji Temple several hours away in Gifu. In the picture above, you can see Anthony standing under the gate, just to the right of the leftmost tall white banner. Behind [...]