The large rusty white sign above says "this is a national treasure; don't play inside" and the small one on the stone lantern says "don't touch" Yoshida shrine complex is full of signs with all manner of these kind of admonishments.... somewhat of a bummer.

So, on my short outing on Sunday morning to explore Mt. Yoshida, where I ended up finding the Yoshida Shrine nestled in the mountain, I had started at an ancillary shrine accessible by a small twisty road toward the south edge of the mountain, desirable as a starting spot due to its compelling attributes of [...]

While Anthony was at his swimming lesson last Sunday morning, I decided to kill the hour by scooting the kilometer over to Mt. Yoshida and poke around.

I "discovered" Mt. Yoshida when Stéphane Barbery (he of my earlier Jidai Matsuri festival photos and the wilting flower posts) introduced me to it back in April. At that time I got to visit only one small part; this time I wanted to visit the major shrine I knew to be there.... somewhere. Mt. Yoshida is a relatively small outcropping in the middle of town – about 35 acres, half the area of [...]

A wall near where Anthony has swimming lessons is covered with these purplish flowers. Again, my D700 seems to want to overexpose everything, and I ended up using -2½EV exposure compensation to stop the petals from blowing out. One side effect of the relative underexposure is that it makes the scene look dark (it was in fairly bright shade), but I didn't want the rich colors to be lost (as happened in this flower, due to an effect described in "Why Does "Brightness" Wash Colors to White?").

Another effect of the underexposure is that the central, lighter portions of the [...]

Returning from an errand today, I liked how the late-afternoon brisk autumn sun was hitting some old cozy (read "dilapidated") Machiya houses near my place, so I grabbed the camera and headed out for a short photo-hunt stroll.

I'll share the pictures of the houses another day; in this post, just a few "mood" pictures from the day, which was sunny and brisk, much nicer than the overcast gloom of yesterday (which was photogenic nevertheless).

The picture above was the last I took of the day, just as I was returning home, of two ladies (likely a girl and her [...]

Having felt cooped up in the house for the last week, we took an impromptu drive into the mountains north of Kyoto yesterday, stopping by a bakery on the way to pick up a snack. Not long after entering the mountains, we stopped off the road to eat at a location that happened to be near the Hakuryuuen Garden, which I posted about in some detail a couple of months ago.

As before, it was closed off with a fence across the entrance, right at the road shoulder....

But if you took care when buses passed, you could walk up [...]