The New York Times Travel section recently published the article “36 Hours in Kyoto, Japan” (thanks Ed Pouso for the link), and one of the locations the author visited is the delightful Otaginenbutsuji Temple (愛宕念仏寺) in the northern Arashiyama area of Kyoto.

I thought it was a missed opportunity that the article didn't include a photo from the temple, which reminded me that although I've visited the temple twice, in both the spring and fall of 2012, I'd not yet gotten around to posting anything. My own missed opportunity, of which my photo catalog holds so many. Sigh. So until I can do a full-on post, here are a few desktop backgrounds of some of the 1,200 statues — ranging from whimsical and silly to serious and pious — that dot and fill the mountainside location.

(The author of the NYT article writes the name of the temple as “Otagi Nenbutsu-ji”, but in this post I write it the way the temple itself writes it: “Otaginenbutsuji Temple”. In any case, the actual name is “愛宕念仏寺”.)

To be clear, the captions are the feelings that I ascribe to the statue as I look at them today while writing this post. I don't know what the original sculptors intended to convey, but I suspect the point of the collection is to let each piece evoke in the viewer whatever it evokes. Along those lines, perhaps I should not put any caption at all.... (?)

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The Kitano Tenmangu Shrine (北野天満宮) in northern Kyoto is perhaps best known for its huge plum-blossom orchard, but in looking over the photos I've yet to publish from a visit a year ago, I realize that there's so much more to show. So today we'll shift concentration away from the blossoms, and continue with the non-blossom theme that yesterday's post ended with.

All the photos on this post are from a visit a year ago yesterday.

The shrine has many buildings, but the main building is difficult to miss in its sumptuousness. As is common at shrines, there's a big thick rope with a large crotal bell (“jingle bell”) at the top.... shaking the rope prior to your prayer rattles the bell, perhaps awakening the gods to your petition....

Here's a shot with enough context to feel the rope's size...

Continuing the view as we move up...

It was quite crowded the day I was there, so I had to wait a while to get the shot that leads this post. While waiting, it was enjoyable to watch the folks queue to make their prayers.

I'd brought along a little-used Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 that I'd bought broken for a low price and had repaired by Nikon, but it's never felt right. Sometimes the “not right” lends a nice sense of dreamy ambiance, and for me that's the case with some of the following...

This shot looks as if it's had a ton of “negative clarity” added in Lightroom (like this or this or this), but here the effect is all from the lens. You can tell from the lanterns that I hit focus reasonably well, so this weird ghosting is probably because the lens is defective.

The effect gets quite pronounced if you miss focus, as I did to an almost comical effect in this next shot, but for some reason I really like it:

Yet, sometime, the 50mm f/1.2 can take a pretty good picture. I haven't figured out why this one doesn't have that “creamy imperfection” sense to it...

Anyway, turning to the left and looking past the queue, there's a sort of covered (but currently unutilized) area used for market stalls and such...

However, from inside...

And you can see above that down the center is yet another set of lanterns. Here's the bottom of one:

It's perhaps interesting to note that the lantern predates electricity in Japan, and as such was likely actually used to provide light. It's also interesting to note that it predates the ability of non-Japanese to visit anywhere near Kyoto. I mention this because the lantern was sponsored in part by the “Shimada Money-Exchange Shop” (presumably part of Shimada Bank, which got top billing).

This was a time where foreigners weren't allowed anywhere near Kyoto under pain of death, and only 11 years after Japan “opened up to the outside” and Japanese themselves were allowed to leave Japan, so I think it's a telling indication of the rapid change Japan underwent during this time that a money-exchange shop could do well enough to sponsor a shrine, especially in an area where foreigners were not even potential customers.

As far as I can tell, Shimada Bank has been lost to the dust of time, but its gift remains all these generations later.

For some serious lanterns, visit the small east entrance. Here's a wigglegram showing the view from outside looking in:

Revisiting the main building where people were waiting in line to pray, not many people seem to know it, but you can actually go inside. Here's the view from its veranda looking out to the line of folks waiting to pray...

The bulk of the building is closed to visitors. In a small landing leading from the back, a monk's sandals await his return...

Back outside the main building, I just love the detail of roofs made with many layers of thin ceder shingles...

Here's a wigglegram look at the main building from the side, as one approaches from the east entrance we saw earlier.

And finally, because this is the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine, an obligatory plum-blossom shot:

I first posted about this shrine six years ago. I hope both my photography and storytelling has improved a bit since.

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I've been thinking that it's about time for a “spring blossom preview” post, to look forward to the many plum, peach, and cherry blossoms that the calendar will soon bring to Kyoto, and when I dip into my photo archive, lo and behold I find that it was exactly a year ago today that I visited the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine (北野天満宮) and its famous (but only just starting to bloom) plum grove.

今日の写真はちょうど一年前（去年の二月二十二日）北野天満宮（京都市）で撮った写真です。

I've already posted the following from that visit:

• Plum Orchard at the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine: Not Quite Prime Time
• More Budding Plum From the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine
• Yet More Early Plum at Kyoto’s Kitano Tenmangu Shrine

Still, one can never get enough pretty flowers, so here are some more to get me in the mood for the coming spring...

The plum at this location are in a variety of deep pinks and creamy whites, but the photo above is extra creamy because it was shot at f/1.2.

Even farther on the creamy scale, the following was shot with a 50mm f/1.2 lens “freelensed” for increased magnification. I took the lens off the camera and held it in front of the camera, probably at a slightly-off angle. The combination of imperfections and light leaks makes for a certain kind of “dreamy” look if you're in a charitable mood, “crap” if not. Personally, I can't decide.

At this point on the calendar the gardens are not yet crowded.

(Three weeks later I paid another visit, and by then the grove was in full bloom.)

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A couple of ultimate-Frisbee friends from my days at Yahoo!, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, went on to make a little messaging app with the silly name “WhatsApp” that I've been running on my phone for a few years. It's quite convenient for communicating with friends while on the go.

It's much nicer than the traditional SMS phone messaging. “Frictionless messaging”. That's why 320 million people actually use it every day. I last used it an hour ago to chat with my brother.

Anyway, I just found out that these friends sold their little messaging app to Facebook for $19,000,000,000.

I'm so thrilled for them.

It's particularly sweet for Brian because early on while he was “helping Jan on his app”, Brian applied for a job at Facebook. He was turned down:

So he went full-in with Jan on WhatsApp. Quite the adventure, indeed!

By the way, the “WhatsApp” name comes from their original idea for their app... when I first started testing it for them in early 2009, its intent was merely a current-status tool, so your friends could see what you were doing at the moment (“At the gym”, “in a meeting; don't bother me”, etc.). I tried to be helpful in testing, but practically speaking I didn't think it would be useful; who's going to go to the trouble to keep the status updated all the time on the off chance that a friend will find the information useful?

I'm glad that they moved the focus to messaging.

Congrats to Jan, Brian, and their small team! Unlike winning the lottery, this was earned, building something from scratch that creates real value for others. WhatsApp spawned a slew of copycats (the most popular being LINE, which appeals to the early-teen crowd, and Facebook's own Messenger), but WhatsApp remains the Gold Standard for mobile messaging. Simple. Clean. Fast. No ads. cross-platform. A dollar a year.

Finally, a little tidbit about Jan from the early days at Yahoo!  Jan used to be the most hated person at Yahoo! among the engineers, because when he joined as the first person with a clue about Internet security, he forced us all to start using secure tools for communicating among our back-end machines. We had been used to an easy free (but decidedly insecure) world, and Jan's changes were inconvenient and disruptive. We all hated him for it. Of course, he was absolutely right, and over time he earned the respect he was due.

I'd started to write up a blog post about the once-in-every-hundred-years roof repair currently going on at the Chion'in Temple down the street from me, and intended to note in that article that the temple is perhaps best known for its big main gate, when I realized that the big main gate has never appeared on my blog. I'm not sure how that's happened, but I'll rectify that now with photos that I happen to have lying around in my Lightroom catalog.

The gate doesn't look all that big in the photos above, but believe me, it is all that big:

The shot above came just a few days after my point-n-shoot had broken and been sent for repair, and I'd decided to move up to my first dSLR but had not yet received it. So I was shooting stills with a circa-2002 video camera. Ugh.

I ended up receiving the dSLR I'd ordered (a Nikon D200) the next day. My initial results with it were better than with the video camera, of course, but it took a while before I grew into it. Anyway, here's a shot of Chion'in's gate with that Nikon D200 after I'd had a couple of years' experience under my belt:

The gate can be quite pretty at night, but one needs a tripod to shoot it properly, and I'm generally too lazy. I did head out with a tripod six years ago for “Kyoto Higashiyama “Hanatoro” Lightup Event” and on the way apparently took the shot above.

Several years ago the road leading up to the temple was redone with nice lighting, and for this a tripod is a must, but again, I'm too lazy, but since I'm not too bad at holding steady for a longish exposure, I sometimes give it a shot if I'm walking by at night and happen to have the camera. Here's one such handheld attempt:

I'd also tried to photograph the nicely-lit path the day I got that D4, and the following photo appeared on my blog in “Took My New Nikon D4 Out For A Spin At Night (Before Reading The Manual)”:

The gate wasn't lit up at the time, so it's almost imperceptible in the background shadows, but technically this does count as an appearance on my blog so I guess today's post is not really its first appearance.

One evening last fall I came across the beautiful scene in front of the gate marred by a marketing display by Tesla Motors. This was particularly disappointing because I own stock in the company, but I suppose the temple has to make money somehow to pay for the every-100-years roof repair. (I don't know who owns the land here, separated from the temple by a public street, but I assume it's the temple.) A few days later the scene was repeated with BMW, so I guess there's some comfort in knowing it wasn't just Tesla.

And while on the subject of Tesla Motors, they weren't sold yet in Japan at the time so it was my first time to actually see one, and the in-dash navigation system was positively pornographic in excess:

Anyway, now that I've gotten Chion'in's gate out of the way, I can go ahead and write the blog post about the main building's roof repair.

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