This post is a continuation from Part 1 of "Kyoto’s Amazing Haradanien Garden", with a bunch more photos that I hope gives a sense what it's like to visit at the height of cherry-blossom season.

I'll explain below why Haradanien (原谷苑) is wonderful despite the crowds, but make no mistake, it's very crowded.

It's crowded, but the layout of the garden, with wandering paths on a hillside, is masterful. There are people behind the lady posing above, but you can't see them, and that works well with the first rule of photography: "If It's Not in Frame, It Doesn't Exist".

Yesterday's post ("Photo Shoot at Kyoto’s Haradanien Garden: John and Ai") has inspired me to at least start to try to show the magnificent Haradanien Garden (原谷苑) in north-west Kyoto, a few kilometers in the mountains behind the Kinkakuji "Golden Pavilion" Temple. I'd made my first visit last week and from that trip had posted so far only one wigglegram, and then visited a few days ago for the photoshoot with John and Ai, and from that visit also posted some subtle pastel blossoms.

Having entrusted my route to get there to Google Maps on my iPhone, I unknowingly ended [...]

I recently met Paul Barr and a pair of married friends of his for lunch, and we ended up taking the opportunity to visit the Haradanien Garden (原谷苑) in north-west Kyoto for a quick couple photoshoot.

It's still on my list to do a proper blog post about the place (update: it's here), from my visit last week from which so far I've posted only one wigglegram, but it's a daunting prospect because the site is incomparably wonderful. Anyway, you'll see a bit of the site in these pictures today.

It was John and Ai's first visit, so initially we [...]

I paid another visit today to the outstanding Haradanien Garden (原谷苑) in north-western Kyoto, where the wigglegram ("3D photo") I posted the other day was taken. Today's visit was to do some portraiture with some very photogenic friends, but first a quick post of a small cluster of blossoms (of the millions at the garden) that caught my eye.

To give a sense of context, here's Paul Barr at the same tree...

Continued here...

I made my first visit the other day to the Haradanien Garden (原谷苑) in northwest of Kyoto, a few kilometers into the mountains beyond Kinkakuji ("the Golden Pavilion"). It was, without question, the most amazing place to see blossoms (cherry and others) that I'd ever been, by orders of magnitude. "Stunning", "Awesome", and other overused platitudes don't do it justice, at least when at the peak of season when I visited.

It's been a while since I've done a wigglegram, so even though I've not yet gone over the photos from the visit, I went ahead and grabbed out enough [...]