As I mentioned in "What It Looks Like When Tiered Rice Paddies Go to Seed" the other day, I recently took another trip with Shimada-san and Paul Barr to the middle-of-nowhere mountains of Uji City (south-east of Kyoto).

On the way to the first spot we'd marked on the map, while winding through a thin mountain road, we came across an unmarked side road that Shimada-san knew lead to a dam (one dating to a power generator built almost 100 years ago). He knew that the road was closed off at some point along the way, but otherwise we didn't [...]

In "Exquisite Beauty Growing Like a Weed by the Side of the Road" the other day, I noted that while driving through a sparsely-populated village deep in the mountains of Uji City south-east of Kyoto, we made a stop to check out a local shrine we happened upon. The shrine's entrance gate appeared in yesterday's "Scenes From Rural Japan: Mountain Village in Uji City" as well.

The shrine has the name Kiyotakiguu (清瀧宮), and is just a small local shrine for the village, like any number of similarly unassuming local shrines and temples that have appeared on this blog (recent [...]

Here are a few random pictures from the colorful Towel Museum in Imabari Japan, which I covered in a couple of posts last month (part one and part two). The towel giraffe above is a smaller version of the one Anthony is hugging in this photo from part one.

The displays of wares for sale at the many shops were always colorful...

I was thinking of using this picture as one of my "What am I?" quizzes, but it's probably not challenging enough, so I'll just post it here, and the answer follows later in this post.

The big wall [...]

As I noted in last week's "A Little Cold-Forging Metal Work", I recently visited a craftsman in the art of traditional Japanese swordmaking.

I have no interest in swords as weapons, historical items, or even as pieces of art (such as seen in "A Few Japanese Swords of Note"), but I find how they're made to be facinating. (See this video for a superficial overview.)

Later this month, Pierre, a Canadian working in Wakayama, Japan, will take the test to be an officially licensed Japanese swordsmith. If he passes, he will be only the second non-Japanese in history to do [...]

I've had a number of posts recently about the Cosina Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 and the ultra-creamy bokeh it has in close-up macro shots, as featured in "Exploring the Edge of Creamy Macro Bokeh with Lily of the Nile", and other recent examples here, here, and here. All those examples were taken in less than ideal conditions, with the camera held by hand while the flower or whatnot jiggled in the breeze. So today when I noticed some nice fluffy dandelions by the river, I thought to bring some home to give the Voigtländer a whirl with the benefit of a [...]