Kyoto is starting to see splashes of color all around, quite earlier than I expected (which says something either about an early season, or my failing memory). These pictures were from yesterday, which was a mix of sun and clouds.

The previous day saw some rain in the morning, and when Anthony came home and opened his umbrella to air it out, this acorn fell out. He had apparently picked it up somewhere along the way home and deposited it in his folded umbrella for transport.

Yesterday he brought home a pumpkin seed that he procured somewhere, so we're off [...]

With his kind permission, I'm showing a few of his photos from that set. I've retained his original French captions.

The Jidai Matsuri (lit. Festival of Eras) celebrates Kyoto's more-than-1200-year history, with a long parade of groups in many different periods' period costumes. One great feature (for me) is that it runs right by my house, but a lamentable feature is that it runs right by my house.... in the city... with traffic lights and cars and utility wires and buildings and such. For the most part, photography is just not worth it. (The also-famous Aoi Matsuri runs right by [...]

One day last fall, Anthony came back from playing in the park with Fumie, carrying a hand full of stuff he'd found lying around the park. Fumie dumped it into a shallow bowl and sat it on a little table in the living room in front of a sun-facing window.

All season it sat there, and I loved it. I hope they do it again this year.

(If I had any guts, I'd try some of the amazing abstract-nature-macro photography that Dan Sroka makes look so easy and natural. Luckily I don't have a macro lens, so I don't need [...]

After Nils Ferry showed me Rengeji Temple the other day, we continued on my scooter up into the mountains north of Kyoto, toward Kibune and Kurama. I'd made the trip by car many times, but never by scooter, so I took the opportunity to check out a cool-looking location I'd only briefly glimpsed before as the car went past.

It turns out that it's a garden, with the big stone to the left of the steps giving its name as Hakuryuuen (白龍園).

Unfortunately, it's a private garden not normally open to the public, so I was limited to admiring what [...]

The picture above is not that special, but for some reason really grows on me as a desktop background. When viewed big, there's just something about it that I like, giving my current desktop-background image a run for its money.

It was the view just outside the window at the Toganojaya Restaurant in the north-west mountains of Kyoto, Japan, which we visited this past weekend (and was the subject of the four previous posts: one, two, three, and four). In this post are a few final pictures from that visit...

The same branch that heads out of frame in the [...]