Fumie is in the thick for preparations for her fall ballet recital, but she took a rare day off on Sunday for an outing up to the Sanzen-in Temple (三千院), half an hour's drive to the mountains north-east of Kyoto. She particularly wanted to see the hydrangea they're somewhat known for, and since they were having a "hydrangea festival" (あじさい祭), the timing seemed fortuitous.

Anthony got a pre-visit snack of mitarash dango at a shop just outside the entrance...

He couldn't eat them all, but the sauce is a bit too sweet for my taste, so we formed a symbiotic [...]

As I mentioned in "What It Looks Like When Tiered Rice Paddies Go to Seed" the other day, I recently took another trip with Shimada-san and Paul Barr to the middle-of-nowhere mountains of Uji City (south-east of Kyoto).

On the way to the first spot we'd marked on the map, while winding through a thin mountain road, we came across an unmarked side road that Shimada-san knew lead to a dam (one dating to a power generator built almost 100 years ago). He knew that the road was closed off at some point along the way, but otherwise we didn't [...]

In "Exquisite Beauty Growing Like a Weed by the Side of the Road" the other day, I noted that while driving through a sparsely-populated village deep in the mountains of Uji City south-east of Kyoto, we made a stop to check out a local shrine we happened upon. The shrine's entrance gate appeared in yesterday's "Scenes From Rural Japan: Mountain Village in Uji City" as well.

The shrine has the name Kiyotakiguu (清瀧宮), and is just a small local shrine for the village, like any number of similarly unassuming local shrines and temples that have appeared on this blog (recent [...]

Today's photos are sort of a combination of the softness we saw in "Exploring the Edge of Creamy Macro Bokeh with Lily of the Nile" with detail in "Exploring the Sharper Side of the Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5". I was driving through the middle-of-nowhere mountains south-east of Kyoto with friends Shimada-san and Paul Barr, and when we stopped to check out a small shrine we happened upon, these clover(?) were right next to the car.

The shots above and below are almost identical (the flower is slightly further away in the shot above), but the effect is wildly different....

The Voigtländer [...]

So, last week with "Revisiting Imabari's Colorful Towel Museum" I was wrapping up a series of posts (part: one and two) about the oddly-interesting Towel Museum in Imabari, Japan, and I ended with a shot of the flowers on our table at the museum's cafe.

For context, here's our table...

... and here's the little shot-glass of flowers on the table...

But the little unassuming collection of flowers becomes great fodder for exploration with the creamy goodness of the Cosina Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5, so while waiting for our food, I took a few minutes to try different compositions. I was [...]