As I wrote last week, my former manager at Yahoo!, Mike Bennett, visited town. After seeing his girlfriend and her family off in Tokyo, he returned to Kyoto for a couple of days of touristy stuff with me.

I took the opportunity to try out a slightly-broken Nikkor 50m f/1.2 that I'd picked up on Yahoo! Auctions (which is the eBay of Japan). Even after I add the cost to repair the heavy aperture ring and slight rattle of unknown origin, it'll have been cheaper than buying a new one, but truth be told I bought it because I'd confused [...]

These first two photos, from a side area at Kyoto's Sennyuji Temple, probably don't look like much in the thumbnails here on the blog, but clicking through to larger versions and they have a certain "presence", especially the first one. Or maybe it's just me, but I like them.

One side held a quaint little rest area...

The ceiling was woven (bamboo, I suppose)...

Wandering further around the fringes of the huge-but-ill-defined temple area, I came across a sub temple with a nice entrance garden...

One of its buildings has a wide veranda with a roof of exposed beams, that [...]

The first photo in yesterday's "Roofs and Rock Gardens at Kyoto's Sennyuuji Temple", the first photo shows the view from the entrance that I'd happened upon as I'd wandered the general area. It turns out it was a small side entrance, with just a small hut with a fee-collecting monk inside. (The hut can be seen at the left of the first photo of that post.)

Above is a view of the entrance and the hut, both sitting under the sprawling canopy of a perfectly-shaped maple brimming with the vibrant green of spring. It was gorgeous (though looks like a [...]

As I wrote back in April's "An Amazing Day of Photography at Some Eastern-Kyoto Temples", I'd spent a wonderful morning wandering around an area of eastern Kyoto that I'd not visited before, with many temples and a bounty of spring blossoms and flowers. I did one followup post a couple of months ago, but much remains that I'd like to share.

Perhaps the largest temple complex I came across was that of the Sennyuji Temple (泉涌寺). It has many buildings separated by large expanses of gravel -- a decidedly non-spring feeling not made better by the weather, which was heavy [...]

In "Pleasant Little Village in Uji" last month, I showed photos from the edge of a small remote village in Uji City (Kyoto Prefecture, Japan) of maybe a dozen houses scattered about. Today's photos are from the other edge of the village...

Considering the similar shots in "Exquisite Beauty Growing Like a Weed by the Side of the Road" and "Scenes From Rural Japan: Mountain Village in Uji City" (both from a trip the week prior to the one that produced today's photos), I'm probably overdoing these a bit, but I like them and it's my blog, so here we [...]