After spending most of last week with a mild cold, I finally felt better toward the weekend, so we took off on an impromptu overnight trip to the onsen (hot springs) at Kinosaki, a three-and-a-half hour drive through the mountains north-west of Kyoto, to Toyo'oka City in the neighboring prefecture of Hyogo.

We haven't had snow yet in Kyoto, but hoped to see some on the way. I envisioned the scene we saw in 2007 in Hokkaido with clean dry streets surrounded by pretty snow, but just in case, I had new snow tires on the car, to avoid the [...]

Going over some pictures from our recent trip to Okinawa, I was disappointed with those from our visit to Kouri Island, a small island a bit more than a mile in circumference off the northwestern coast of Okinawa. It's an island that has, more or less, nothing for tourists except the bridge leading to it, which is pretty.

I hadn't even looked at the pictures until today, and when I did, I was depressed by a lot of flat boringness that didn't really reflect the dynamic nature of the weather and the interesting landscape.

Until I came across this one.

The other day I posted a tree/island silhouette that I took on our recent jaunt to Okinawa. The shot was taken in the rain under a gloomy overcast, near dusk. Because I was exposing for the silhouette, I could get by with a relatively undemanding exposure that I could have achieved even with my old D200...

I took the shot from a beach near the road, and while returning to the parking lot in the increasing rain, I noticed an Okinawan grave tucked away deep in a clump of trees, nestled in the darkness at the side of a hill....

An important component of Japanese culture is "presentation", but it can quickly takes a backseat when inconvenient, such as how much of Japan's natural beauty has been disfigured by utility poles, wires, and street signs. (Examples on my blog over the years include: this - this - this - this - this - this.)

So, it's especially nice when presentation is not only remembered, but really done well. The shot above was the after-meal coffee and cake that came with the $10 lunch we had at an out-of-the-way cafe during our trip to Okinawa last weekend.

For $10, we got [...]

Okay, so yesterday's post about Japan's Cherry-Blossom Season Off to an Early Start was somewhat misleading. I normally write about things in Kyoto where I live, but Fumie and I took a short trip (just two nights) to Okinawa, a string of Japanese islands in the East China Sea, well beyond Amami (which we've visited twice, and I've blogged about many times), about half way between the Japanese mainland and Taiwan.

We returned yesterday, and I posted some cherry-blossoms that we discovered while exploring Okinawa. To be fair, though, I have to note that the locals told us they expected [...]