Gion Festival 2024
One of Japan’s biggest festivals, the Gion Festival draws …
Author: Alexander Farrell
Sanjo traffic
Don’t drive through downtown Kyoto on ….
The pilgrim
At the west end of the Sanjo Bridge, there are two statues …
Drone show
My first drone show. There were two at Heian Shrine on this night. I just missed the first one. Had to stay out in the rain for …
Parked at Nanzenji Temple
JPG usually gets the job done for me, and I prefer how my Fujifilm cameras render the files, but sometimes the lighting makes RAW …
Parked in Arashiyama
Japan’s cities are known for their congested roads. (Actually, that’s probably true for most cities around the world.) A tourist hotspot like Kyoto is certainly …
My camera
I shot happily for quite a while with the smaller, less powerful XT-30 as my camera body, but when the X-T5 came out, I decided it was worth the upgrade …
Tokurinan pump well
I’ve lived down the street from this Zen temple for more than 10 years. They had a very old well pump here. Not sure how old exactly, but it looked like …
Moroha Shrine main sanctuary
Earlier I posted about the stone torii gate at Moroha Shrine. This here is the honden, which is the shrine’s main sanctuary. Although Kyoto’s Buddhist temples …
Moroha Shrine torii
A neighborhood shrine can be a nice quiet place at night, if you can get past the somewhat spooky vibe, especially if you’re familiar with Japan’s …
Stone torii and passing train
Torii, the gates that mark the border between our world and the sacred world according to Shinto, Japan’s indigenous religion, are excellent structures …
Toji Temple cherry blossoms
Perhaps nothing exemplifies the harmony between tradition and modernity in Kyoto more than the nighttime illuminations …