Japan's cherry-blossom season has arrived a bit early this year. During a drive in the mountains yesterday, we came across some cherry blossoms that were just starting to bloom.

There weren't many blooms yet, but already lots of buds....

I normally don't post new cherry-blossom pictures until mid-to-late March (last year's "It Has Begun: Cherry Blossoms in Kyoto" went up on March 25th), although new plum blossoms do come a month earlier, with 2007's first plum-blossom post arriving in mid February, and last year's "Plum Blossoms at the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine" just catching the tail end of the plum-blossom on [...]

In the Kyoto Winter Preview I posted the other day – about an uncommon snowfall in Kyoto last winter – the story left off with us arriving at the Heian Shrine....

Normally you can go up and through the big gate (such as done by these cute kids in kimono and these demons and this family), but this day it was roped off with "beware of falling snow" signs, as if there was actually enough snow to accumulate on the roof to a dangerous level. It seems sort of silly to me, but in any case, you can still enter [...]

I made the 10-minute scooter ride this morning to Kyoto's Yamashina Ward, to explore what I thought was a mountain road that I discovered yesterday with Google Earth. Sadly, it turns out that the road is not open to the public. Still, I came away with a few nice shots from the mountain-village area just prior to the gate.

This is all very close to the concrete jungle that is Kyoto... perhaps half a mile (it's two miles from my place), but as I've mentioned so many times (especially here), once you get into the mountains, you feel like the [...]

I was at Arthur's house today helping out a bit with his remodel, and couldn't help but notice how lovely an effect the crumpled leaves made as they surrounded the stepping-stones in his garden.

The leaves came from this tree, now mostly devoid of color or leaves...

For reference, here's what they looked like 10 days ago, as they were approaching full color...

I also had some shots at full color, from a week ago, but I seemed to have deleted them by accident during a dyslexic moment when I zero-filled the wrong memory card. Doh!.

The last time I posted a picture of a burnt wall, it was due to an unfortunate fire that destroyed a nearby restaurant. This time is a bit different.

The quietly famous Murin'an Garden (無鄰菴) near my house in Kyoto has outside walls that are quite varied and interesting. Some of them, such as those shown above, are wood whose top surface has been burnt to charcoal. Looking at a view showing the wall in situ you can see that the burning is clearly purposeful..

While it's clear that the wood has been burnt intentionally, the reason is not clear. [...]