This past weekend Typhoon #21 of the season (“Lan”) blew past, and it was quite the different experience from most. (It was the 21st typhoon in the western Pacific this year, but only the second or third to have much effect on Kyoto.)

It looked like it would make its closest approach to Kyoto late in the evening, so the day leading up to it was blustery and rainy. I find it fun to ride in weather like that, so just as I did a ride in the lead-up to a typhoon in August, I went out for a bicycle ride in the blustery afternoon, doing a simple Kyoto Heart Loop in the clockwise direction.

The ride (see at Strava) ended up being much tamer than I expected. The rain was nonstop, which is why there are no photos from the ride, but despite it seeming “blustery” while at home, out on the road and in the mountains there was surprisingly little wind.

However, the eerie and unexpected dead-air calm that existed for most of the three-hour ride was broken just a few times by sudden, ridiculously violent “wind shear” moments of terror that threatened to blow me right off the bike. I was hoping for “wild blustery”, but this was well beyond that. Luckily, this kind of wind didn't total more than 30 seconds for the whole ride.

One thing I learned on this ride was that the “Glacier Glove” Waterproof Glove is anything but waterproof. They completely soaked through.

Anyway, I was home by 6pm, six hours before the typhoon made its closest approach to Kyoto.

As the intensity of the rain increased throughout the evening, the Kamo river started to get higher and higher, as it tends to once every couple of years (as seen here, here, and here), so I went out again just to check out the river.

Here's the radar view as I left the house at 10pm:

To compare with a big flood a few years ago, note the small bridge above-center in the previous photo. That's the same bridge that was wiped out a few years ago.

So, it seemed to be relatively mild for Kyoto, which was 300km (190mi) from the eye's closest approach.

So, I was surprised in the morning to see that almost all the roads in the mountains were closed:

Wow. What happened? I jumped on my bicycle to go take a look.

My first destination was the road to Hanase Pass, which goes through Kurama (the village with the temple that I blogged about a few weeks ago). The main sign above says that the road is closed to various destinations, and it's sitting in front of a different sign that I assume was announcing road closures related to the Kurama Fire Festival, which had been scheduled for the previous day.

I continued through the village toward the mountains...

This road is normally completely clear pavement (as seen here), but now it looks like a little-used track road through the wilderness. The untouched detritus in the middle of the road is as thick as a pillow.

Everywhere in the mountains, the smell of fresh ceder (from all the broken branches) was absolutely luscious.

It's easy to see where the road goes because of the tracks laid down by vehicles that passed since the storm, but it must have been eerie and scary for the first vehicle in the morning, trying judge where the road was merely from the lack of trees.

I didn't have a lot of time, but I popped over to the road that goes through Kumagahatta, the west-of-center section of the Kyoto Heart Loop cycling route that so many use.

This was the end of my exploration for the day.

Sadly, one of the five workers seen above would be killed a few hours later when he was crushed to death by a section of tree trunk they were working on.

With that sad news fresh in our minds, Damien and I made a somber visit to the area the next day....

The road was officially closed, but we received permission to venture in so long as we stayed out of the way. Now that the road was physically passable, they were working to get power restored to folks down the line, and planning on how to clean everything up, restore the road, replace the lost utility poles, and re-string all the utility cables.

Eventually we made our way around the left half of the Kyoto Heart Loop heart, passing many crews working on various things. Nearing Kyoto toward the end of that loop, I was surprised to find that the restaurant Yama-no-ie Hasegawa was actually open, so we stopped in.

I've stopped in this place many times while out with the bicycle or the camera, as the “nearby photos” link under these photos shows, but it turns out that it was Damien's first visit.

The tree above is being held up by utility wires, which are causing a metal utility pole to bend:

As a bonus (and nice counterpart) to all the destruction, Damien showed me the entrance path to a temple, a path I have passed dozens and dozens of times without ever having noticed:

I'll have to visit again in a few weeks once the leaves have started to turn.

In the week that I've been trying to get this blog post written, most roads have been reopened, though the Kumagahatta section covered at length above is not, and likely won't be open for a while.

Typhoon #22 is approaching, and should be here soon.

今回は二年前の圓光寺（京都市）の写真です。撮影日は11月17日でした。

It's gotten suddenly chilly here in Kyoto, Japan, reminding me that the fall-foliage season is approaching. So just as with last year's “Looking Ahead To Fall with a few Shots from Last Season” post, this post is to help get me in the mood. All the photos on this post are from the same mid-November 2015 visit to the Enkoji Temple (圓光寺) in northeast Kyoto.

This temple has been featured on my blog many times, so the “nearby photos” link under any photo brings you to other posts from the temple.

The whimsical statue seen at the top of this post is just off to the left of this path, a tiny smudge of darkness in the photo above.

Of course, the little statute is just one small feature of the lovely moss-covered garden....

It can get quite crowded, but even when it's not, it's almost impossible to get a people-free view of the room and the garden. I (almost) did once, as seen in “Impossible Shot at Kyoto’s Enkoji Temple: Garden *and* Garden-Viewing Room at the Height of Fall Colors, Devoid of People”. That was five years ago... I should try it again this year.

This is the couple that posed for “Wigglegram of a Pleasant Couple Among the Fall Colors at Kyoto’s Enkoji Temple”

Here's a wigglegram of Minh and Nghia at the Murin'an Garden in Kyoto. The last photo of “Nghia and Minh in Kyoto, Part 2” is actually part of this wigglegram.

Continued here...

I'd heard that the Kurama Temple (鞍馬寺), nestled on the side of a mountain in a northern suburb of Kyoto, made for a nice visit, but despite riding past it dozens of times since I got into cycling, I'd never actually entered it. This week I finally did.

The main part of this post is about this week's visit, but first let me recount my prior experiences with this temple...

Normally I just ride past and perhaps snap a photo along the way, such as the following shot from my first “real” bike ride 2½ years ago:

Sometimes I stop at the entrance to take photos, such as the following shot from the two-year anniversary ride of my first “real” ride earlier this year:

Apparently I had stopped by the entrance to this temple during a photo outing in 2012, with Paul and Damien, when I took this photo of the edge of the entrance stairs:

I post this shot because I really like its richness, its “vibe”, and to contrast it with all the crappy iPhone photos we'll see below, from this week's visit.

On that same drive in 2012, I took these shots of a monkey harassing someone (for, I suppose, food of some kind):

That day-long outing five years ago, with Paul and Damien, was really great, and many blog posts resulted, including:

• “Kyoto’s Road to Somewhere”
• “A Few Pretty Pictures from Kyoto’s Middle-of-Nowhere Sourenji Temple”
• “A Quick f/1.2 + f/5.6 Pair from the Sourenji Temple”
• “A Wigglegram from the Well-Named “Fallen Leaf Shrine””
• “A Long But Photogenic November in Kyoto”
• “Kyoto’s Souren-ji Temple at f/1.2”

On that wonderful 2012 outing, I also took this slightly-overexposed shot of Damien:

And that photo brings me to the reason that I finally visited Kurama Temple this week.

Damien was about to start his fourth and last “Hell Week” course of chemotherapy, a week-long torture of nausea-inducing drugs that saps the will to live, so he wanted to get out into nature one last time before. He intended to hike from Kibune to Kurama, and then relax at the Kurama Onsen. I wasn't able to make it in time to join the start of the hike, so I went directly to Kurama, hiking up to meet him at the temple at the top of the mountain.

All the rest of the photos on today's blog post are from this recent trip, taken with an iPhone.

The path to the top has many different sections, both with steps and just a plain gravel path. The only thing that was consistent was the climb... whether steps or path, it kept going up and up.

Finally, after 20 minutes of brisk climbing, I arrived at the lowest part of the temple proper.

... where I found Damien waiting for me. I was tuckered out from the hike, but took a quick selfie...

Apparently there's a huge multi-level complex to be explored, but we had neither the time nor the energy (nor the appropriate camera) to enjoy it, so we headed back down the way I had come.

Even though we were taking the exact path I'd just come up on, the view was so much more interesting heading down. Time and again you could see much more splayed out before you. It was wonderful.

All in all it whet my appetite to return with a real camera. Paul will likely be visiting next month, and by then Damien should be recovered from his chemo, so I hope the three of us can spend a day here with the camera. It will be glorious.

After we exited the shrine, we went to the Kurama Onsen, and I tried the outside bath for the first time. Until now, the Kurama Onsen for me was merely the start to one of Kyoto's hallmark tough cycling climbs, the 5km @ 9% climb to Hanase Pass.

In the evening, for his last meal before returning to the hospital for Hell Week, we indulged in American-style Pizza from Dai's Pizza Kitchen...

As I write this, it's the Friday at the end of his last Hell Week, so he's got light at the end of the tunnel. The week after Hell Week is usually filled with all kinds of side-effect problems, so that's still in the way, but he should hopefully be back to normal by the end of the month, just in time for some awesome fall-foliage photo outings.

We had an eclectic little ride the other day to celebrate Joshua's birthday. Unlike a common ride that makes a big loop through some gorgeous mountains, this ride stayed closer to home, hopping from interesting point to interesting point, at a slow, fun pace.

It was my 16th time to ride with Joshua, since joining him on a NORU bike tour two and a half years ago.

It turns out that one can use this dirt trail to get around having to descent the “Nasty” 21% slope. Personally, I'd rather just descend on the road because neither my bike nor my courage are set up for off-road riding.

This little off-road excursion fit within the spirit of the day, which was to throw caution/inhibitions into the wind and just have fun doing crazy things with friends. (That “crazy things” are as mild as a dirt path and the other things you'll see here speaks to the fact that we've settled down in our maturity.)

The first true “crazy thing” came immediately after descending on this dirt trail: we rode up “Old Kyomi”, a road that is now paved but was likely a trail for 1,000 years prior. A car-friendly bypass road appeared in the 1950s, so this older road is now rarely used.

It's very difficult.

The overall average of the segment — 1.6km (1mi) at 13% — belies the true difficulty of the climb. It's really unfair that the photo makes it look flat; it's very steep.

The 100m leading to the point where I took the photo above averages 22%, which for me would not be an insurmountable problem if the road surface were trustworthy. But it's not... just look at it... the road pavement is rough and crumbling to begin with, and on top of that it's littered with rocks, sticks, leaves, moss, sand, etc., all just waiting to take your tire out from under you.

That's why I was taking photos where I was. I had hoped to complete the climb without stopping (something I'd not been able to do when I tried this climb a couple of years ago), but at this point I wasn't able to avoid a rut or something, and my wheel slipped and I had to put my foot down before I fell down. So, I set the bike aside and sat down with the camera to await the others.

Nigel was the first to arrive, and was pushing his bike. He's probably the strongest among us all, and you might remember him from the outlandishly crazy “Ascending Hanase Pass on a Mamachari”, so might wonder why someone so strong would be pushing. The answer is that he was on a single-speed bike, one that didn't have multiple gears to choose from. My bike has 22 gear combinations; some folks' mountain bikes have 30. His had just one, and the road surface was just too difficult for the one he had.

I don't know who the guy in red was, but he shouldn't have been there. Riding close behind someone on this road is simply dangerous, and to try to pass would be as ludicrous as it is selfish. If the other person is part of your group then at least you have some basis of trust on which you can perhaps negotiate the selfish move, but if you don't know them, wow.

After this bit of fun, we made our way across the northern outskirts of Kyoto toward the next crazy climb, and this involved some short but steep residential roads.

I'm still hit and miss with the small camera I bought for cycling. The biggest problem that I have with it is that the controls get bumped off to some crazy setting, and I don't always notice right away, especially when I'm trying to take an impromptu shot while riding. Most often the exposure compensation gets bumped to the maximum negative, so all the photos (until I notice) end up almost black. I can recover quite a bit in Lightroom, but the loss of quality is noticeable.

Another problem I have is severely overestimating the amount of camera shake I can get away with. Many potentially-great shots are ruined because they're crazy shaky like the one above. I include it here mostly because the smiles shine through despite the quality, and to illustrate the point.

We made our way to another steep climb — 580m @ 15% with sections approaching 25% — but this one is much easier than the first because the road surface is good.

Here's a video of the last half of the segment, after I had gone ahead of the others and rode at my own pace. At the start of the video there's no one close behind me, but then suddenly Nigel and Keven appear on my tail, and then at the start of the super-steep final 120m, in a display of incredible power, Nigel blows by me on his single-speed and rockets to the top.

Remember, Nigel (the first to the top) is on a bike that has only one speed, and it's not a speed designed for 20%+ grades. He's just that powerful.

Also powerful was Tomas, who almost caught me at the top despite my having started so much earlier. In fairness to me, I was just going at a steady pace, and was 30 seconds slower than my best time on this climb. But in fairness to him, despite his speed at the end he was still almost a minute slower than his best time (which also happens to be the “KOM” best-recorded time for the segment).

The photo that leads this blog post shows Joshua and David cresting the top.

At a top is a cemetery (for all the people who have attempted the climb) with a nice view:

This view has appeared on my blog before, here.

I'd made this climb six times prior, but hadn't noticed that the cemetery extends off in one direction, so was happy that Joshua showed me.

We opted not to stop at this spot this time, but as the nearby photos link under the picture shows, I've stopped many times.

Then on to the next steep little climb, just 315m at 13%.

Now we were making our way to the Kuuya-taki Waterfall, a place I've been visiting for years, after having discovered it five years ago. When I got into cycling, it was one of the first rides I did.

It'd been a while since I'd ridden there, and the approach was longer and in worse shape than I remembered.

Everyone else left their bike at the road, which is probably fine because it's essentially deserted anyway, but out of habit I brought mine with me.

The short approach hike is beautiful, and I've posted many photos from it over the years, including:

• Discovery On The Way to The Waterfall
• Interesting Bark Near the Kuuya-taki Waterfall
• Beyond The Staircase Ruins at the Kuuya-taki Waterfall
• On The Way From The Kuuya-taki Waterfall'>
• The Effect of Shutter Speed on the Appearance of Flowing Water

Then on top of that you have the beauty of the shrine/waterfall area itself.

David's pose is a natural one for a waterfall; I did the exact same thing the first time I went in.

We relaxed for a while, then headed out

After returning to the city, a few of us thought to get a cup of coffee in Arashiyama. We went through its famous bamboo groves, which had a lot of people, but, thankfully, no where near peak.

All in all it was a fun day of relaxing friendship punctuated by short, intense efforts, occasionally with a bit of terror thrown in.

Happy birthday, Joshua.