I mentioned in yesterday's post that the late-afternoon view was quite dynamic from eastern Kyoto's Shogunzuka Overlook, and I wasn't kidding. I'd never seen such a variety of conditions, much less over a mere hour and a half.

The view above is from when we got there an hour or so before sunset, toward Osaka. The air is crisp enough that you can see the picket-fence silhouette of Osaka's skyscrapers 30 miles away, yet somehow hazy enough in areas to be punctuated by colorful sunbeams. It was nice.

Yet, panning toward the right to look northwest instead of southwest, the view was wildly different:

Lest you think I'm making this up, both photos above use the same white-balance treatment. The difference was really that dramatic.

Whatever was creeping in didn't seem quite like fog or haze... it looked more like smoke, I suppose... but whatever it was tag-teamed with the sun and some high clouds to make for some dramatic views I'd never seen.

The photo above looks like it's been treated with some kind of sepia filter, but like all photos on this post, it's a normal full-color shot. It really did look that eerie.

But it was to get more eerie... almost gloomy...

The view in the picture above, facing almost the same as the first photo (but taken 15 minutes later), made me feel I was looking at some far-away place left deserted after decades of civil war, or some such scene. It was really eerie and unreal, and quite interesting.

The whole theme for the afternoon seemed to be that if you didn't like the view, wait five minutes and it would be completely different.

Indeed, not long after these shots were taken, the “smoky gloom” (whatever it really was) dissipated completely, leaving behind only a slight haze to be lit on fire by the backdrop of a setting sun, so by the time the group in yesterday's bride-at-sunset shot arrived twenty minutes later, there was nothing but brilliant jaw-dropping views.

Now that I think about it, it was still fairly monochromatic, but just brilliant orange instead of gloomy dirty gray, so maybe the change wasn't as complete as I first thought. Still, one change in the color made for a 180-degree change in the mood.

The crows, ever active at dusk, were in fine form the whole time, gathering in the trees around the lookout and suddenly bursting forth in a noisy cacophony of wings and caws, only to eventually return and repeat again later. Here's one such burst, ten minutes after sunset when the orange was all but gone...

Sometimes the best light of the evening explodes from nowhere just before civil twilight (10-15 minutes after sunset), so we waited around. it was darkening cold blue for most of the time, but eventually the sun gave up a last gasp in the form of a mild warm glow on the horizon:

It's wasn't at all the rare burst I'd hoped for, but it was better than nothing, and a fine cap to day.

I happened to walk up to the Shogunzuka Overlook in eastern Kyoto this afternoon with Paul Barr, enjoying quite the dynamic late-afternoon sun.

The sunset itself was nothing close to what I've been hoping for since the most amazing sunset I've ever seen, but it was still nicer than I've seen in a while, and certainly much nicer than a week ago.

But it became infinitely nicer when a young couple and their fun and boisterous entourage showed up for a pre-wedding photo shoot. Of course, Paul and I had to add to the shutter-click count, and as a bonus, I got to pose the bride for a shot I envisioned would be really nice. More on all that another day.... the shot above is just one that I snapped from the sidelines before getting involved. At the time, the pro photographer was just out of camera to the right.

Continued here...

That's the original of the made-to-look-like-night photo I posted my Dark, Moonless “What am I?” Quiz the other day. Seeing it in its full brightness doesn't make its purpose much more apparent, though.

I just could not figure it out, so I asked the staff at the hotel, who told me that it was a long-closed aquarium. How odd!

It looks like you can just walk onto it to explore, so I asked whether one can walk around, and was told yes, so after checking out, we took a stroll to investigate...

I wanted to see what the “tank” thing was, so walked up the spiral ramp on the outside, to the second level...

The first guess to my quiz post, by Richard, hit it spot on, even alerting me to a Wikipedia entry on it. It's the main attraction of what used to be “Marine Park Sakaigahama” (with “Sakaigahama” being the name of the area). According to that Wikipedia entry, it opened in 1989, which was the height of the Japanese bubble economy. It closed 10 years later.

Inside the “tank”...

According to the sign, it's the Penguin House...

Continuing up to the top of the “tank”, we got a nice view of the marina and the hotel beyond.

The place was not deserted... there were some workers doing something involving diving and welding, but they didn't pay us any attention. But it turns out that the place is not just open to the public... a local charter captain came up to let us know that the “do not enter” barrier had been removed so that the workers could enter. It seems that the structure, which is indeed a boat, had sprung a leak that was being repaired.

All the big pools for the animals were mostly under the main platform. I suppose the main platform was for special shows, eating, and other stuff. I like abandoned places (like this) so would have liked to see the whole place, but I didn't feel I could ask, so just chatted as we all walked out.

For some reason that I can't fathom at the moment, I let Zak Braverman talk me into taking a walk through Kyoto, ostensibly for some vaguely-defined health benefits. We were to meet at Kyoto Station and then walk the couple of miles to a restaurant for lunch, but I decided walk to the meeting point as well, and after adding a few things in the evening, ended up walking about 12 miles.

I brought the camera with me, of course, but since I'm not much into street photography, I didn't take all that many shots. (I made a post from a similarly-random short stroll four years ago, but I think my threshold for what to post is a bit different now.)

The abandoned bike with the flat tire and puppy decal was about the only thing I bothered taking a picture of on the walk to the station. The other thing was the burnt-wood siding of a house....

One can see this fairly often, and I've even posted a similar closeup before (here), but what made this place unique was that the burnt-wood siding was used for the entire height of the wall, from ground to eave, and on all four walls. I'd never seen that before, and if I go again, I'll try to bring a wide-angle lens so I can get an overall picture.

After lunch, on the way home near my house I decided to pop into a small inner-city complex of temples that I'd passed a thousand times but had never actually entered.

There are lots and lots of temples in the city parts of Kyoto. This map shows more than 50 in a small area (about 1/6th of a square mile) just west of my place...

It's nice that they're close by, but they tend to be surrounded by the ugliness of “city” (utility poles, ugly apartment buildings, etc.) and the owners often succumb to the easy tax-free money of turning large swaths of their grounds into monthly-rent parking lots. At the spot marked in red on the map, here's the view I would see for brief moments when passing by...

It looks all full of nature in that shot, and indeed, inside, the main building is really quite impressive...

... but it's less enjoyable without the selective view of the camera. Panning down a bit...

Some ginkgo trees were starting to look nice...

... which reminds me to make sure to visit the Ochiba Shrine earlier this year than last.

But what struck me most about this temple building was the grain of the wood...

Those three shots were from near one area of the veranda that circles the whole building:

Also nice were its impressive eaves, though less impressive my photography skill that suddenly left me for some reason, though I was able to recover some details in post...

More impressive grain on the bell-support structure...

One of the small sub temples in this area looked very nice, but was marred by an ugly apartment building next door:

You can see a “tree wall” that they've likely been growing for 30+ years since the apartment building went up.

After returning home and resting a bit, I thought to visit Shogunzuka with its sweeping view of Kyoto (or check out this really sweeping view), and hope for a nice sunset. But in keeping with the theme for the day, I thought I'd walk, something I'd never done.

On the walk, you can definitely feel the foliage season approaching...

The setting sun also made for a dynamic view on the side of an apartment building...

The path to Shogunzuka involves a short (20-minute) but steep mountain hike, along the these lines, but then I'm up to the overlook for what turned out to be a pretty pedestrian sunset...

The crows, always active here at dusk, were in prime form this evening, accumulating in the trees near the overlook then launching into the sky en masse in a noisy cacophony of caws and flapping wings...

... only to return and repeat the process over and over.

On the way back down I passed near the entrance to the Shogunzuka Mound temple and grounds, which were open for a special autumn lightup.

I didn't go in because it seems a bit early in the season, and my one lens (a 70-200/2.8) didn't see appropriate anyway.

On the return path home, just before descending into the trees, I was treated to a nice view of the Osaka skyline almost 30 miles away...

I knew it would be really dark in the woods by the time I headed down, but on the way up I realized that I'd forgotten to bring a flashlight, so while waiting for the sunset, I was able to catch a few radio waves with my iPhone and I downloaded a free “flashlight” app, which, as the name implies, turns the camera-flash LED into an always-on light. It's shockingly bright, and made the return hike a breeze.

Entering the edge of the city again, I passed by a ritzy restaurant with a sign on the employee-entrance door...

After Anthony was down for bed, I walked another four kilometers, first stopping by Hiyoshido in Gion for a leg/foot massage, then across the river to Uroko (鱗) for a beer and their most-excellent 蛇の目焼き janomeyaki chicken.

Then I walked home, and slept.

I have no idea why I like this shot, but I did at first glance, and I still do, so here it is. It's one of the first shots I took on a visit to the most fabulous Yoshiminedera Temple (善峯寺) in southern Kyoto last year, with Paul Barr. (As an aside, Paul is likely at this very moment on a flight from The States to make another visit this year, but that's a post for next week).

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in “Kyoto Fall-Color Preview With Impact: Impressionism in Lightroom”, I found thousands of photos in my Lightroom catalog from last autumn that I hadn't even looked at. This morning when I opened up Lightroom and visited the set of photos from the Yoshiminedera trip wth Paul, I got sidetracked by the polorization-filter examples that I came across, but I had intended to post some of the nicer shots. I did manage to post a few the evening after our visit a year ago, but most still waited for even a first look.

At this point I'm only about 15% of the way through the shots, and haven't reached anything really spectacular, but I hold hope it's still waiting. I'm posting now what I've accumulated so far, though I do wish I had done this during the spring, as I'd intended.

It's been the same buliding in all the photos so far. There's nothing partiuclarly special about this building... it's just the entrance gate to the shrine complex, and there are many more like it (or much more grandious) elsewhere on the grounds. But for the purposes of this post it's special because it's the first one you come aross when you visit, and as I said, I've made it only about 15% of the way into my shots from the visit.

If you've seen any of my stonecarvers posts, you know I'm a sucker for a well-aged, well-curved stone lantern.

Even though they're found at temples all over Japan, few know the word for the rain-of-cups downspout like seen above. This includes me except for when I remember to refer back to this post, and I'm reminded for a few moments until it again slips from my mind.

To be continued...