Yesterday I made my first visit to the famous Miho Museum (ミホミュージアム) in the mountains of southern Shiga Prefecture, an hour or so out of Kyoto.

There are two things that must be said when talking about this museum:

The first is that a visit is a spectacular experience. I can't begin to tell you the high level of sense and style the designers have in displaying works of art. In particular, the current "special collection" on display until the middle of this month, of what I can best describe as "a bunch of old red plates", is jaw-dropping eye-popping [...]

The Seifuso Villa (清風荘) near Kyoto University was a private residence for centuries before being donated to Kyoto University in the 1950s, which now preserves it as a cultural treasure. Thanks to the kindness of a friend who teaches at the university, I was able to take a tour of the villa last week.

This simple gate is on a path that leads to a small tea house where the resident might meet afternoon callers of sufficient distinction to merit such a setting.

Careful inspection of the ground under the edges of the roof that would otherwise be moss shows [...]

This is a followup to yesterday's post with photos from the Hokyo-in Temple in Kyoto, a temple with some of the most harsh, restrictive anti-photography policies I've ever encountered.

On one end of the spectrum are places that allow even tripods, such as the Yoshiminedera temple. Moving along toward more restrictions, the Heian Shrine allows tripods, but only if you pay a ¥2,000 (about US$20) fee. Most places don't allow the use of tripods at all, but the Hokyo-in Temple featured yesterday doesn't even allow you to have a tripod in your possession. Even if securely sequestered in your backpack, [...]

My first outing this season to partake of Kyoto's fall-foliage delights was on Friday, as I wrote about yesterday. The first stop was my first visit to the Hokyo-in Temple (宝筐院) in the Arashiyama area of western Kyoto.

The long path into the garden was quite photogenic, though it was difficult to get a shot that both avoided people in the photo and avoided annoying people while taking the photo, but within those constraints I did okay...

Yet, despite all the work to avoid people in the shots, I tend to like ones with people better, like the one at [...]

Fall-foliage season, long over with in most of the Northern Hemisphere, is just getting into full swing in Kyoto. Throwing common sense to the wind, I dared to venture to the Arashiyama area of Kyoto yesterday (Friday), where the density of tourists during this season threatens to form a singularity. Adding to the mass of folks, I went with Paul Barr and Damien Douxchamps.

We limited ourselves to a few temples on the northern fringes of Arashiyama, and so we avoided the most oppressive crowds.

The first stop was my first visit to the Hokyo-in Temple (宝筐院), which includes a [...]