Driving by Nijo Castle today, I remembered that I hadn't really posted much yet from my previous visit there (which was my first visit, which is embarrassing to admit because I've lived in or near Kyoto for 12 years).

So, here are some pictures of the main gate, a huge, heavy, thick wooden door augmented with bands of steel.

The wide-angle lens I used to achieve the picture above camouflages the sheer size of the door. Note the small opening at left, and the size of someone sitting just outside the door.

This shot of the other side of the [...]

Well, at least the first that I've noticed. Returning from a trip to the store around 2pm, I noticed a few blossoms on the trees near my place. It's just in time, too, because as I noted in the last couple of posts, the plum blossoms have started to wane. So, I grabbed a few snapshots of them, and even turned a couple of ones with blue sky in the background into desktop backgrounds....

Using the time-lapse sequence I made last year as a guide, it seems that these trees have started to bloom about one day earlier than last [...]

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 [...]

Bamboo floor of the outside walkway at the tea house of the Murin'an gardens, taken last summer when my friends KFC and Verena visited Kyoto.

The next two are stones on the beach of Honohoshi Cove on Amami Ooshima, of the Amami island group in the far south of Japan, about where the East China Sea becomes the Pacific Ocean. The curved stones make a surprisingly calming sound as the waves wash up and down them.

The final one today is also from our trip to the Amami island group, a beach on the southern tip of Kakeroma-jima [...]

With a forecast for snow all night, I was disappointed to wake up to find less accumulation than we had the other day (Amazing Snow at the Heian Shrine), which itself wasn't really all that much. In fact, it was sunny out. Still, we all went for a walk, and despite no prognosis for good photography, I brought along the camera and tried to make the best of it.

It was clear that it was going to be an unphotogenic time when we arrived at the bridge featured in yesterday's Snowy Bridge in Kyoto to find only a light dusting [...]