Category: photography

I am horrible about posting about my travels, it takes me way too long to do it. It’s become a bad habit. In 2023 I posted the final blog about my 2022 trip to France after returning from Italy. And last year I posted the first blog about Italy in June —not too bad…— but the final one in December, just before I left for Japan, literally on the last day. it’s a bad habit, but taking photos is far more fun than editing them. I mean, to take the photo you have to be there, editing them is nice but it’s not the same thing.

Anyway, I’m trying to do better. Not much better mind you, it’s September, but, baby steps.

This is the final post for my trip to Japan in 2024. I’ve already posted about the side/day trips to Himeji, Nara and Uji [confusion.cc] and the few days we stayed in Osaka [confusion.cc]. Now for the main course: Kyoto. It took a while to review, edit and post the photos, I took over 3000 in Kyoto! I think Kyoto is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Though I’m a simp for Japanese traditional design, and Kyoto was the capital for a thousand years. You know how many temples and shrines you can build in a thousand years? According to two different sites I found there are “over 1600 [Buddhist] Temples and 400 [Shinto] Shrines” in Kyoto. Neither cites a source, but it’s on the Internet so, you know, it must be true (and, to avoid also not citing a source, even if I think the data is suspect; here is site one [sjmcjapan.com], and site two [mykyotomachiya.com]).

I’ve seen many of the “must see” temples and shrines on my past visits to Kyoto, in 2004 [confusion.cc], 2005 [confusion.cc], and 2010 [confusion.cc]. But my daughters have not, my oldest was 2 in 2010 so doesn’t remember at all and my youngest was born 2 years after that trip. So, we did have to revisit all the must see sites. Which I don’t mind. But we did visit a few places I’ve never seen so it was great.

Kyomizu-dera

We didn’t have a set plan in Kyoto, which is unusual. It’s how I prefer to travel, but in many places it doesn’t work anymore since you can get tickets online. The ability to get tickets online and the fact that many places have limited tickets per day means you have to plan ahead. For Italy and Paris I had to plan out almost every day and book tickets weeks or months in advance. But things were much more relaxed in Kyoto, most temples and shrines don’t require any pre-booking or buying tickets in advance, you can just walk up and get tickets. I did check what days things were closed but we decided what to do the evening before, or even on the morning of.

The first place we decided to go was Kyomizu-dera [wikipedia.org]. The idea was to see the autumn colors while they lasted. The unusually warm summer and autumn meant that many trees were still covered in red, orange or yellow leaves around Kyoto. But less so with each passing day. Of all the places we wanted to go, Kyomizu-dera was the one that I though we should go to first. And we were not disappointed, the colors were amazing. Possibly, the best colors I’ve ever seen.

But everyone else in Kyoto also had the same idea. The crowds were almost as amazing as the colors. It was Harajuku crowded. But totally worth it.

And, because I had fun doing it last time, let’s compare some of this trips photos with previous trips. Here is the main hall or Hondo, at Kyomizu-dera 20 years apart, in March 2004 and December 2024.

Kinkaku-ji

I think that Kinkaku-ji, the “Golden Pavilion”, must be the most famous site in Kyoto. Though, maybe, the torii’s of Fushimi Inari-taisha could be more famous. Either way Kinkaku-ji is stunning and a must see.

Kinkaku-ji is extra special, beyond its beauty, to me because it is where, in 2005, I got engaged. That made for some fun with my daughters on this trip. I showed them the exact spot. The extra shot from 2005 below is when I got engaged.

Ginkaku-ji

We chose a gray, rainy day to go to Ginkaku-ji [wikipedia.org], the “Silver Pavilion”. Fitting as the first time I visited Ginkaku-ji back in 2004 it was also raining. And in 2005. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever been to this place when it was not raining.

Overcast sky’s and light rain are fitting for Ginkaku-ji. The mossy gardens and hills around the pavilion work quite well in the rain. Or maybe that’s just because I’ve never been there when I was sunny. Anyway, here are a couple of photos of a rock with a handle that some monk left on a stone bridge, for more than 20 years now…

Nijo-jo

Nijō-jo-jo-jo-jo-jo. Nijō Castle [wikipedeia.org], is where the palace of the Shogun was. Is. Nijō-jo actually has to palaces; the Ninomaru Goten, and the Honmaru Goten.

Ninomaru Goten was the actual palace of the Shogun, which has the “nightingale floors”, which sing —or squeak really— and stunningly beautiful paintings and woodwork. All of which you cannot take photos of. I’ve visited Ninomaru Goten multiple times.

Honmaru Goten was an imperial villa which was (at least in part) moved to the grounds of Nijō-jo after the Meji restoration from the grounds of the Kyoto Gyoen, the Kyoto Imperial Palace. This is the first time I’ve been in Honmaru Goten, apparently it was recently renovated/restored and reopened to the public. It’s beautiful, amazing fabrics, printed/stamped paper, paintings. As you would expect for a imperial residence/retreat.

Of course there are also gardens. All proper samurai need extensive gardens to wonder around while they compose verse.

Since you can’t take photos of the gorgeous interiors of the palaces, here’s a stone lantern in the garden, from 2004 and 2024:

Fushimi Inari-taisha

Fushimi Inari-taisha [wikipedia.org] is another must visit place. Especially in the Instagram era, I guess. I first learned about the iconic Senbon torii, or “thousand torii” from the movie Memoirs of a Geisha. So, I didn’t visit it in 2004, but I did visit it in 2005 after seeing Memoirs.

It is a mecca for the Instagram, or Tik Tok, or whatever other social media there is. The crowd of people at the most iconic corridor of torii, the Senbon torii is insane. Really only one person can take “the perfect shot” at a time and they need to all take a hundred so it takes forever to get a chance. I don’t actually have good shots of my daughters because I was just done with the crowd. When I went to look at the photos I found that the focus was off and so the photos are not good. If you squint the are OK on a small screen but they are not good. C’est la vie. It leaves something for them to want to go back for.

Here is a shot from 2005 and 2024. I don’t even have a shot of the Senbon torii section from 2005. It was snowing and not very crowded when we visited in 2005, we didn’t stay long, should have take some more time and gotten a good shot.

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Now I wanted to point out some places that I visited for the first time on this trip:

Saihō-ji

First up: Saihō-ji [wikipeida.org] or the “moss temple”. There are a couple of temples or shrines in Kyoto that are not so easy to get into. Saihō-ji is one of them. It requires reservations for a specific day and time and you cannot make reservations for more then two people. Traditionally you send a request by mail the a return postcard. But these days you can also use their website (every temple and shrine has a website and many of them have amazingly beautiful designs). There is also a minimum age of 13 to go.

We made reservations and went in groups on different days. And Saihō-ji did not disappoint. After copying a sutra we were able to walk around the gardens. Apparently there are 120 or more types of moss that make up the carpet of moss covering the entire garden. I didn’t count. Once again the late onset of autumn made for a even more beautiful visit. The moss was covered in many placed with deep red Japanese maple leaves. There was a single man waging a war on them racking up large piles and carrying them away in bags. But they were falling like snow.

Tōfuku-ji

Tōfuku-ji [wikipedia.org] is a temple that was not even on my radar. We saw it on a flier or poster or somewhere and on the last full day we decided to go check it out. It’s stunning, I wish we had done it earlier, most of the trees were already mostly bare, the lower branches still red or orange but the color was ending. The view from the Tsūten-kyō a bridge over a small gorge filled with tree, must be stunning. Even in the state we saw it, it was beautiful.

Additionally, there are four “zen” gardens around the abbots quarters that would make the visit worth it even without autumn (or spring) trees. There is a traditional dry rock garden filled with raked spirals and lines, some natural rocks and moss covered mounds. That’s the biggest garden. Then there is one that has bushes trimmed to be flat topped squares checkered with more raked gravel. A garden that is half moss and half raked gravel around several short stone pillars. Finally there is a moss garden with small squares of stone that form a checkerboard pattern with the moss and ‘fade’ as you move from one end of the garden to the other: a fully complete check pattern on one side changing into a pattern with a few missing stones, changing into only a few stones among the moss and finally only moss, no stones.

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This post is really long and there are so many more things I could have written about. Let’s just say, Kyoto is one of my favorite cities in the world, a place filled with indescribable beauty, side by side with the hubbub of a modern city.

I’m just going to list a few other places we went. Some I’ve been to before, some where new:

• Arashiyama Bamboo Grove [wikipedia.org], also in Memoirs of a Geisha but I knew about this one before the movie. It’s a lovely, if short, walk. Been there before.
• Yasaka-jinja [wikipedia.org], or Gion-jinja, the shrine Gion district.
• The Philosopher’s Walk [wikipedia.org] or Tetsugaku-no-michi, a path along a canal hugging the hills between Ginkaku-ji and Nanzen-ji. Been there before. Amazing colors when we where there this time.
• Nishiki Market [wikipedia.org], a covered arcade with many shops selling raw and prepared foods. A great place to grab lunch or an early dinner. Been there before. Unfortunately this time I could not find the pickled watermelon! It looks like a giant white raisin.
• Tō-ji [wikipedia.org] a large Buddhist temple, we went to because it was having a flee market, which they do every month on the 21. Tones of vendors, it was fun. First time visiting.
• Chion-in [wikipedia.org], a large Buddhist temple just next to Yasaka-jinja in Gion. Not really a tourist site, we just wandered in after visiting Yasaka-jinja. A few interesting things but not much unless you are their for religious reasons. First time visiting.
• Byōdō-ji [wikipedia.org], a small Buddhist temple near our hotel that is dedicated to a Buddha associated with medicine, but it seems the temple is popular with people who have pets too. First time visiting.

There were other shrines, temples and what-not. We also visited a lot of places to shop. Spent most evenings accompanying my daughters shopping in arcades and malls around Shijō-dōri. It will be a few years, but I’m sure I will go back to Kyoto again. So many more places to see.

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You can see the full Kyoto, Japan, December 2024 [flickr.com] photoset on Flickr. Or brows through the gallery below.

Continuing on my 2024 end-of-year holiday posts (see here for Osaka [confusion.cc]), I want to cover some day-trips we did, before I dive into Kyoto. Over the two plus weeks we spent in Osaka and Kyoto we took three day trips: to Himeji, Nara and Uji. Nara and Uji are so close they almost don’t count as trips. Just a short train ride away, but we had a very relaxed schedule so even when they were close we got a late start and took our time to make a day of it.

I’ve been to all these places before. I first visited Nara was in March 2004, when J███████ S██████ and I went to visit J██ while he was living in Japan. That was my first ever trip to Japan (and my first time using a digital camera, the as the photos clearly show). You can see my blog entry and photos here [confusion.cc].

I visited Nara again, as well as Himeji and Uji for the first time a year and a half later, in December 2005 [confusion.cc]. J███████ invited me, along with Candice, to join him, his wife, K██, and J██, S██████, for a return visit.

So, 20 years from my first trip to Japan, I revisited these places with my daughters. So let’s have a little fun and compare the photos I took 2 decades ago with those from this trip.

Himeji

The first day trip we took, from Osaka, was to Himeji-shi [wikipeida.org] (Himeji city), home to Himeji-jō (Himeji castle). Himeji-jō one of the best preserved Japanese castles, having survived various natural and man-made disasters in it’s 400 plus years. The stark white walls of the main keep, the Tenshu, which sits atop a prominent hill, are visible from most of the city. The striking white color gives the castle its nicknames: Hakuro-jō, “White Egret Castle” or Shirasagi-jō, “White Heron Castle”.

By coincidence the castle was free to enter the day we arrived. Apparently celebrating its UNESCO World Heritage [whc.unesco.org] status. I guess its a thing they do every year? As Himeji-jō was inscribed in 1993 so 2024 would be the 31st anniversary, which doesn’t seem like a particularly important anniversary.

After touring around the castle grounds and making our way through the buildings, up to the top of the main keep and back down its steep stairs. We were rewarded with a rainbow over the castle as we walked back to the train station. Not a very bright one but a nice rainbow nevertheless.

For some comparison, the image on the left below I took in 2005 and the one on the right is from this trip in 2024, 19 years apart. Setting aside better equipment, having a better eye for photography and my greater skill at editing photos. It’s fun to see how little Japan changes.

Nara

Our second day trip, from Osaka was to Nara-shi [wikipeida.org]. Nara-shi was the capital of Japan, where the emperor lived for most of the 700s. As such there is a long and rich history of temples and shrines. Not as deep as Kyoto, given it’s 1100 years as the capital but impressive.

The two key attractions are the tame sika deer that roam around and Tōdai-ji, home of Daibutsu.

The deer are everywhere in Nara Park where most of the temples and shrines that are part of the UNESCO site are located. Tourists, local and foreign alike, buy deer crackers to feed them. Some of the deer will even bow to the people feeding them. But you also see a lot of skittish people being mobbed by several deer at a time, getting overwhelmed, dropping their crackers, sometimes even getting a gentle headbutt from a deer when they fail to hand over a cracker fast enough. All cute and funny but apparently the deer in Nara Park are malnourished and stunted as they eat too many of these deer crackers and not enough wild foliage.

Tōdai-ji [wikipedia.org], “The Great Eastern Temple” is a Buddhist temple that houses Daibutsu or “The Great Buddha”, a massive bronze status of the Buddha Vairocana. The building the Buddha sits in, the Daibutsuden or “Great Buddha Hall” and was the largest wooden building in the world until 1998. The current building dates to 1709 having been rebuild, some 30% smaller than the original, which burned down.

The temple sells roof tiles that you can write on for the ongoing repairs. My friends and I bought one back in 2004, and this time I got one from my daughters to sign and date. So, somewhere on the roof of the Great Buddha Hall there are tiles with my name and my daughter’s names.

Here are two shots of the Daibutsu, fairly close in composition to compare. One from my first trip to Japan in 2004 and one from 2024:

Uji

The last day trip we took was to Uji-shi [wikipedia.org]. Uji is famous for a few things, it’s a major setting in The Tale of Genji [wikipedia.org] a Japanese novel written in the 11th century. Uji is also famous for it’s cultivation of green tea, it’s home to the oldest tea house in Japan (and the 30th oldest company on earth) you wouldn’t know that passing this unassuming building on your way to the other major site: Byōdō-in [wikipedia.org].

Other than to drink green tea, Byōdō-in is why we went to Uji. It’s a Buddhist temple. According to Wikipedia the building was built in 998 as a villa and converted to a temple in 1052. The main building was completed in 1053 and is commonly called the Hōō-dō or Phoenix Hall, though officially it is Amida-dō. This is the building that has been on the back of the 10 Yen coin since 1951. The building and grounds are beautiful, and you have to go just so you can say you’ve been there every time you show someone a 10 Yen coin.

Anyway, wondering around the temple grounds and shopping for green tea were the only things we really did in Uji. It was a relaxing day and not too crowded. And once again, the late autumn was in our favor as there was a lot of colorful foliage around the temple.

For comparison, below is a shot from 2005 of the Phoenix Hall, and one from 2024 taken from almost the same position. You can see how much renovation work has been done to the Phoenix Hall in the past two decades.

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You can see the full photos set from Himeji [flickr.com], Nara [flickr.com] and Uji [flickr.com] on Flickr, or browse the galleries below.

Look at me, only six months since I took the photos and I’m already posting them. Much better than the full year it took me to post the photos from December 2023. Although, I have not even started on Kyoto yet, and there are a lot more of those. So maybe no celebrating yet.

Anyway. We went to Osaka for a few days before we moved on to Kyoto. I’ve never really been to Osaka, passed through but never really spent any time there. Since we flew into and out of Kansai airport, we decided to spend a few days.

We didn’t really have much of a plan for Osaka. The one thing we really wanted to see was Katsuō-ji [wikipeida.org], a Buddhist temple north of Osaka that is associated with “winning”. But the reason we wanted to go is the temple grounds are covered in daruma [wikipedia.org]. Daruma’s are a talisman of good luck so people leave daruma all over the temple. All the daruma are gathered up and burned once a year. It must be a big bonfire, judging from how many daruma there were when we visited.

One of the most striking, and photogenic, sites is a series of sheltered stalls along a stairway that are filled with daruma. Hundreds of daruma, all the traditional, round, red, papier-mâché daruma that people buy and fill in the eyes for their wish to come true. The stalls are filled with daruma of all sizes: from a small as a fist to more than half a meter tall.

Besides the traditional papier-mâché type, the temple sells a smaller, solid wood daruma with a whole drilled in the bottom containing a fortune. These daruma are more waterproof than the papier-mâché variety. Nearly everyone visiting the temple buys one of these, writes something on it and leaves it somewhere on the grounds. Every flat surface is covered in these mini-daruma. Every nearly flat surface has a few balanced on it. And people wedge them in the nooks of trees, or impale them on tiny branches, or squeeze them in crevices in rock walls. They are everywhere. Some have been taken over by fungus and the people have arraigned others into little cult-like meetings, surrounding the fungal ones.

In addition to seeing all of the daruma, the grounds of Katsuō-ji were amazing. Last year Japan had an unusually warm, and long, summer. In fact it was international news that Mount Fuji remained snow free later than any time since records began [bbc.com] (only since 1884, I would have expected that to go back longer in Japan…). But, in this case climate change worked in my advantage.

See, I almost always visit Japan in winter (at least for holiday, I’ve been there in summer for work). This is mostly due to living in Singapore where it’s always summer, so I want to visit cold places. And also the need to plan holidays around the Singapore public school calendar. The end result, is that usually there is no nice foliage, it’s too late for the colorful leaves of autum and too early for the beautiful blossoms of spring.

As I said, this time climate change worked in my favor; the long, warm weather meant that we arrived, in December, with the full colors of autumn still on display. Over the two weeks we where in Osaka and Kyoto most of the red, yellow and orange maples faded to brown and the leaves fell but we were constantly amazed that there were still trees in full color everywhere we went in the first few days. Katsuō-ji was our first stop and it was stunning. I took as many photos of fiery Japanese maples as I did of daruma.

Ok, enough of Katsuō-ji. What else did we do in Osaka?

We visited Himeji to see the castle, and Nara to see the big Buddha and feed the deer, but I’ll post about those day trips separately. In Osaka itself, we mostly shopped an wondered around the city.

We spent a lot of our time in Shinsaibashi [wikipedia.org]. We visited a cat cafe. and spent too much time (and too much money) in gashapon shops. This was to be a reoccurring theme in Kyoto too. Victoria was determined to get a full set of one particular Mofusand [mofusand.co] figurines. She literally got the final figurine on the last night I think.

I also had a chance to meet up with someone I’ve “known” since 2000 that I’ve never actually met. The creator of Little Gamers [little-gamers.com]. He’s Swedish but moved to a small town an hour or so from Osaka a few years ago. Luckily he was able to make the trip to Osaka and meet up. It amazes me, and delights me, that I can meet up with people I know in random cities all around the world. People I went to school with in London, or have worked with over the years, and in this case a guy I know because he draws a web comic I read. I don’t have a large group of friends but it’s very cool that I have people around the world to meet up with.

The last thing worth writing about that we did before moving on to Kyoto was to visit the small, but very interesting, Osaka Ukiyo-e Museum [osaka-ukiyoe-museum.com]. It’s small, but if you enjoy ukiyo-e [wikipedia.org] it’s worth the visit. Amazingly, they were showing a collection of original and early reproductions of Hokusai [wikipedia.org] prints when we were there. A number of pieces from the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji [wikipedia.org] series were on display, including the famous The Great Wave off Kanagawa [wikipedia.org], the most famous ukiyo-e or japanese woodblock print ever. You can’t photograph the originals or early reproductions on display, typical museum rules. They did have two slightly newer reproductions, owned by the museum, of The Great Wave and another Hokusai, Fine Wind, Clear Morning, on display that we were allowed to photograph. It’s a small museum, with only a single room exhibition space but worth the visit. They have classes too, on making prints (using linoleum, which is something I did in art in like 7th grade) if you make reservations in advance.

That was it or the first few days in Osaka. But we had to pass back through to get to the airport on our last day. As we flight out was quite late, we stowed our luggage at one of the train stations and spent the day at the Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan [kaiyukan.com]. The main attraction there is the two whale sharks in the massive pacific tank. As you make your way through the aquarium you basically spiral around this tank going from top to bottom of its thirty plus meter height.

And so that was it for Osaka. Next up was Himeji. Let’s see how long it takes me to post those photos.

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You can see the whole Osaka, Japan, December 2024 [flickr.com] photoset on Flickr. Or browse them below.

I covered the details of my trip trip the US in my 2024 Recap [confusion.cc] post. So I won’t rehash that, but I wanted to post some of the photos I took in New York. I’ll get to Minnesota in another post.

I didn’t take a ton of photos, I was only in the city for a few days. I did take a walk from my hotel, south of Penn Station and Times Square, up through Central Park and spend a few hours at the Guggenheim Museum. And I made my way to MoMA for an afternoon.

At the Guggenheim there was an exhibit in the rotunda by Jenny Holzer titled “Light Lines”. It was interesting, the LED displays spiraling up the ramp showing various quotes was interesting to watch. And I enjoyed some of the political pieces – redacted documents related to the “war on terror” and Trump tweets make for interesting material for sculpture. You have to see it.

My favorite piece of Jenny Holzer work that was on display was a small, easy to miss, plaque near the very top of the spiral. A simple plaque you might see in any building with some label or name on it. But this one said “Laugh hard at the absurdity of evil”. Given the current state of the world, that just too close to home.

Meanwhile, over at MoMA there is a giant blob of rainbow colored stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling with smaller “moons” of stuffed animals, each moon a different color…

Also, van Gogh’s Starry Night [flickr.com], and Picasso’s Ladies of Avignon [flickr.com]. And much more, MoMA is big. I spent like 5 hours. It’s not Louvre big but it’s much bigger than the Guggenheim. But between the Guggenheim and MoMA I saw a lot of “modern” art in a few days.

Anyway, I only had a few days in NYC, so modern art was most of what I did. Other than that I caught up with A█████, aka F█████, as I mentioned in my 2024 Recap post. And, I enjoyed some proper New York pizza and bagels.

I also swung through NYC on the way out but was just there for one evening. I stayed in the TWA Hotel [twahotel.com] at JFK. There I met M███ in the most random fashion, as covered in the Recap post. But I also had time to explore the TWA Hotel itself and admire —and photograph— the 1960 architecture and decor. Including the “Rainbow Room” or “Hidden Alcove” where the Beatles hid before, or after, their famous press conference in 1964 when they first landed in America.

Anyway, that’s enough for this post. Just remember:

Laugh hard at the absurdity of evil

Jenny Holzer

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You can view the whole New Your City, New York, USA, May 2024 [flickr.com] photo set on Flickr.