One of the most wonderful aspects of Kyoto is that it has so many treasures – usually hidden in plain sight – such that you never run out of new discoveries. Today was yet another day of discovery for me, right in my own backyard.

10 minutes north by bicycle from my place is a small tree-covered outcropping called yoshidayama (Mt. Yoshida). I've sort of noticed it over the years, having driven near and around it often, but it's always been one of those things that I never actually paid much attention to. When you're driving by, it seems more [...]

Or, You can get there from here... but not this way.

While waiting for the bus to arrive on the dizzily morning last week that Anthony rode the bus to school all by himself, I snapped this picture of a fence across the street, along the park-like grounds of the municipal museum of art. I think it's pretty.

(Be sure to see the large version for the full effect... it's sort of arresting, but in a nice way).

Doing an image proximity search on the area beyond the fence yields a lot of results from my blog over the years...

This post continues from my previous post, "Cherry Blossoms in the Rain at the Heian Shrine". Even more so than in that post, a lot of the pictures this time have a sort of distinct (distinctly annoying?) feel, with multiple planes of focus (or the lack there of).

Also, as with some of the photos in last month's "Kyoto 2009 Cherry-Blossom Preview", some this time have had a touch of Lightroom's "negative clarity", which I apparently am enamored with. The shot above, of course, has had a lot of negative clarity applied, to give it a glowing pastel feel. I [...]

Last Tuesday, after Anthony went to school on the bus all by himself, I thought I'd take advantage of the rainy weekday morning (no crowds!) to check out the cherry blossoms in the garden of the Heian Shrine. The most common variety of cherry blossom around here (the pure white yoshino) are almost completely gone, but the Heian Shrine's justly famous garden is full of other varieties that were still pretty much at full bloom.

By the time I started over (the shrine didn't open for an hour and a half after Anthony had gone), the rain had started up [...]

My best friend from college, Ram Kulkarni, was in Japan for business, and so stopped by to visit in Kyoto this evening. I saw him previously about a year ago in Tokyo, and prior to that was likely about 11 years ago when he was Best Man at my wedding.

Last time he'd been working at a think tank as an advisor to a former prime minister in Finland, but now he has a much more demanding boss: he's started his own company in Bangalore, India.

I brought him up to the real Shogunzuka Overlook, which I actually entered for [...]