I'd gone out to the mountains with Paul Barr today, intending to retrace the steps of last week's temple hopping in the mountains of south-western Kyoto, but we were so consumed by the beauty at the first stop, the Yoshiminedera Temple (about which I still have 500+ photos from last week to sift through) that we didn't do much else.

But still, in the late afternoon on the way home, between episodes of getting soaked in the rain, we did happen upon a small temple that we took a few minutes to explore.

I've got such a backlog of photos [...]

Two weeks ago, in "Around the Kyoto's Daitokuji Temple Complex”, I mentioned that Stéphane had introduced me to a temple I really liked (something he's done two more times since, the Kongourinji Temple a couple of days ago, and the Yoshiminedera Temple yesterday). The temple two weeks ago was the Koutou-in Temple, one of the many in the Daitokuji Temple complex.

The entrance from the road is simple but tasteful...

The short path turns to the left, under the roof you can see at the left side of the frame.

That's the main entrance gate, which is fairly small and [...]

This is turning into a spectacular week of exploration and discovery. On Monday I spent the day scootering in the mountains to the south-east of Kyoto, discovering an amazing temple and other photogenic delights I've yet to find time to post about. (I did post about some tiny bridges that were a bit geometric, but otherwise not too interesting.) Then yesterday I tag along with Stéphane Barbery to the amazing Kongourinji Temple (金剛輪寺) an hour away in Shiga, and I came back with 619 photos, mostly amazing and also now in the queue for posting. On the way home yesterday, [...]

I'm guessing the sparse white puffs in the foreground are cherry blossoms, the jyuugatsuzakura (十月桜, "October Cherry Blossoms") I first ran into at the Himukai Shrine a year ago. I'd not seen them since.

Today I accepted an invitation from Kyoto friend Stéphane Barbery to accompany him on a visit to the Kongourinji Temple (金剛輪寺) in Shiga Prefecture, an hour's drive away on the far side of Lake Biwa. As I mentioned yesterday, I wanted to continue to give the pain in my arms a rest from computer work, so I joined him and ended up having a deeply emotional [...]

Two weeks ago I visited an ikebana (flower arranging) exhibition and posted some pictures of arrangements done by kids (aged about three to eight). Today I'll follow up with shots of a few of the many (100+?) other arrangements.

I wrote in that post two weeks ago the problems with photography at the event.... the backgrounds, the lighting, the positioning... all were elements that I couldn't control, and all were horrible from a photography point of view.

I'm about as uncultured a clod as you'll find, but even I could tell that the whole concept of an ikebana exhibition seems [...]