And that last picture provides the first real clue that this girl is not the maiko (apprentice geisha) that she otherwise appears to be, because I don't think that a real maiko would flash the peace sign for a passer's-by photo like this.

February 3rd is the cultural holiday setsubun, known for bean throwing, the warding off of evil spirits, and some Shinto rites that involve intense bonfires.

There's also an old tradition, fallen out of popularity in recent decades and now mostly unknown to the younger generations, of transforming your appearance for the day into something you're not... if [...]

Dipping my pen again into the very deep well that was November's visit to the Seifuso Villa (清風荘) in Kyoto, today's post has a bit more from early on in the visit first seen in "Entrance Foyer to the Seifuso Villa in Kyoto".

I vacillate on whether the photo above is of interest. I've deleted it (and then undeleted it) several times.

I showed the garden's formal tea house in "Approaching the Tea House at Kyoto’s Seifuso Villa". Near it are a few small buildings loosely connected with shared outside passageways.... one building being a prep room for the staff, [...]

Here are some more frost patterns from arctic Ohio, following up from the one I posted the other day. It was -10°F (-23°C) with strong biting wind when I took these, by hand, outside in the wind, up hill both ways. According to the image data, I lasted two minutes 10 seconds before I couldn't stand the pain in my fingers any more and gave up: considering that I had heavy insulated gloves, it's a testament to either just how very cold it was, or how very wimpy I am. Probably both.

I tried a variety of processing on these [...]

Lots of goldfinches at the feeders at my folks' place in Ohio. During the summer they're brilliant yellow (as seen in "Goldfinches on a Feeder" a few years ago), but they're less vibrant during the winter.

I didn't bring many lenses on this trip... I would have liked the 70-200, but I made do with the Voigtländer 125mm and some cropping. Good birding pics are very difficult and I certainly don't have the skill, but these are fine for me.

The bush was just a staging ground for the feeders. They'd all cleared away when I stepped out, and were [...]

I popped down to South Carolina to visit my brother Alan and to join him in a road trip back up to Ohio, and on the flight last night I sat next to an off-duty pilot for US Airways who lives on a 250-acre farm in Ohio and commutes to his flight hub in Charlotte for work. We had a nice chat.

He knows nothing of Japan, and enjoys farming, so I thought I'd put a post of random "farming in Japan" photos for him. It's somewhat of a challenge to find appropriate (but still unpublished) shots among the 130,000 [...]