I mentioned the other day in a post about a minor heart episode that a local restaurant, Togiya, serves Prucia, a plum wine (umeshu -- 梅酒) from France. I'd never seen a plum wine from outside Japan.

Well, in the store the other day to pick up some of the fiesta-in-a-bottle Sangria Peñasol that I mentioned in last month's "A Bunch Of Blurry Pictures of Folks Pouring Wine", to my surprise I came across a bottle of Prucia on the shelf. In the name of research and public service, I brought it home with me.

I've shown great restraint in [...]

This post shows some example effects of a polarizer filter on vegetation, specifically, the moss and fern laden garden of the Gioji Temple in Kyoto, Japan (祇王寺). On the topic of polarizers it follows from "A Few Polarization-Filter Examples" where I first brought up the topic four years ago, and the fall-foliage followup last year: "Heading Out To Photograph The Fall Foliage? Don’t Forget The Polarizer Filter".

On the topic if the Gioji Temple, this post follows from yesterday's "Gioji Temple Photo Shoot: Nicolas's White Little Mushrooms" and the slightly earlier "Tag Along With Me on a Photo Shoot at [...]

Picking up from where "Tag Along With Me on a Photo Shoot at Kyoto’s Gioji Temple" left off, after the initial moss shots, I turned to the thatched roof of a small gate.

The first photo is looking up the slant to the reeds making the top layer of the roof.

Here's looking at the evenly-sliced bottom face, which perhaps would be considered the eaves if there were walls...

Nearby a set of ferns seems to be springing from the base of a tree and have a real "presence" (I'm not sure what that even means for a plant), but [...]

Typhoon #4 of the season blew nearby on Tuesday, the first one to have any impact on Kyoto. It wasn't particularly eventful, but as I discovered after 2007's Typhoon #4, the air can be quite clear and the clouds quite dramatic after a typhoon blows through, so yesterday after a photogenic hike in western Kyoto, I went up to Shogunzuka in eastern Kyoto to catch the sunset.

As usual, I was hoping for a jaw-dropping display, but as usual, I didn't get it. Still, it was better than most. And as usual, the deep color of the sunset (this time [...]

Did some hiking today. Took some pictures. Here's one.

Continued here...