Following up on "Temple Hopping in Kyoto with Katrin Philippar" from the other day, I left off as we entered the Kiyomizu Temple.

Photogenic sights abounded, but it was really crowded.

The lady in Kimono stood there for the longest time (multiple minutes), waiting for an opportunity for a nice shot for her photographer at the bottom of the stairs. Few people bothered to give her a wide berth, and I suppose that's understandable because it was crowded and the steps were for everyone, but the lady in black right next to her in the shot above seemed in particular [...]

I popped over to the Imperial Palace Park ("Kyoto Gosho", 京都御所) yesterday for some blossom Joie de Vivre kind of shots of folks enjoying the many blossoms... mostly peach and cherry these days. It's the same place I took a bunch of blossom closeups seen two weeks ago in "The Buds and Blossoms are Just Peachy", but this time the lens was the very special the Nikkor 300mm f/2.

It was quite crowded, but nevertheless still quite pleasant.

The bokeh with this lens can be great (such as here), but the bright branches in the background of the shot above [...]

During my outing the other day near Kyoto's famous Kiyomizu Temple, the crowds were out in force, but the atmosphere was still quite pleasant. It helped that it was the nicest day, weather wise, in ages... warm, with no rain.

Amidst the hustle and bustle in the area outside the temple, these two ladies somehow found a wonderful backdrop inexplicably devoid of people, so one posed for the other, creating the kind of nature+kimono scene I'm partial to.

Mostly I thought it'd look better to focus on the photographer to leave the subject of her photo out of focus in [...]

In the 80s my folks hosted an exchange student from Germany. We've kept in touch since, and she stopped by Kyoto last weekend on her way to give a talk at a plant-biology conference in Okayama.

The pleasant walk along the Kamo river that I posted about yesterday was on my way meet Katrin for the day's outing. We'd arranged to meet in front of a clock on the south side of Kyoto Station....

It's a popular time to be in Kyoto, so the hotel at the station is ridiculously priced (~US400/night!), so I was thrilled when Fumie found a [...]

Cherry blossoms are starting to bloom in earnest, but as I wrote the other day, they're particularly far along near the Kamo River between Gojo and Shichijo streets.

I've posted lots of buds and blossoms lately (here, here, here, here, here, and here) so I've decided I've had enough of that, so I'm going to concentrate on the wider, human picture.

No little melodrama to be seen this time... just a pleasant scene.

The first and second floors of this yellow building, across the river from the corner of Kawabata and Shichijo streets, have good restaurants. The second floor is [...]