Here are some more pictures from last week's day trip to Awaji Island's Awaji Hana Sajiki ("Awaji Flower Review"), which I wrote about in last week's "A Few Flowers in Awaji" post.

When we arrived after a two-hour drive, we found a parking lot mostly free of cars, and completely free of cost, which was a very nice bonus. The first flowers you see upon leaving the parking lot is this somewhat sparse field...

Frankly, it was a bit disappointing to see such a scraggly field after such a long drive, though at least it was big. The disappointment totally [...]

After our visit yesterday to Kyoto's Konzou Temple, Anthony and I headed all the way across Kyoto, around some small mountains, and into Otsu City to play in the park with his friend Gen. They have a great park across from their place that we've visited many times.

Gen's little sister, Tamaki-chan, has a very important quality that every child should have: she likes me. Even though her Daddy had to wake her up from a long nap and she was a bit pouty, her puzzling like of me allowed her to put up with me and my camera.

She [...]

Fueled by an unheard-of 14 hours of sleep last night (I went to bed at 7pm! Got up at 9am!! First time anything like this in.... hmmm, how old is Anthony?), I escaped the crush of tourists enjoying the cherry blossoms in my area and took Anthony on a trip across Kyoto and into the mountains to visit the Konzou Temple (金蔵寺), a temple I first visited somewhat by chance during my bamboo-filled Western-Kyoto Mountain Drive that I posted about two months ago.

I didn't mention the temple by name in that post because I thought I'd follow up with [...]

Having a kid in elementary school means a new set of hours for the parents, and as part of that I found myself wandering around outside after returning from school. (Parents accompany first graders to school for the first few days; there are no school busses, so the vast majority of kids take the subway or bus, all by themselves, so the parents go for the first few days to ensure they're settled.)

I got off the bus one stop early to walk around the grounds of the municipal museum of art, which is pretty this time of year. (Clicking [...]

Today was a wonderful day in Kyoto... warmer than it's been lately, and sunny. And with spring break over and kids heading back to school, it wasn't crowded in our area. The cherry blossoms are almost at their peak, so today was perhaps one of the nicest days of the year in one of the nicest areas of Kyoto (which is one of the nicest cities in Japan).

So, of course, we left, and spent the day elsewhere.

The cherry blossoms seen above were on a tree next to the parking lot of where we had dinner, more than a [...]