Sometimes I see a nice scene, but my camera doesn’t. It can only see the thing close up or far away, but not both at the same time. So I take two pictures, each with a different focus.

Such was the case when I walked through Horinji (法輪寺), near Waseda University, a few weeks ago.

The same thing happened a few days later while visiting Suijinja (水神社). I couldn’t decide whether to focus on the fallen leaves on the roof…

…or the maple leaves still on the tree. So I took two photos to cover all the bases.

Posted on December 26th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: buddhist, shinto, 紅葉. Comments: 1

Playing a summer-time game, in the winter, while it looks like autumn…

This was the scene less than two weeks ago at the baseball field in Ueno Park.

I pre-blogged today, and the next few days, as we are on our way to Thailand for the winter break. We should have an internet connection in Thailand so expect some updates from Bangkok and Phuket soon.

Posted on December 19th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: baseball, ueno, 紅葉. Comments: None

The fall season and “back to school” go hand-in-hand in many parts of the states. In Tokyo the fall colors a delayed by not weeks, but months. Today’s photos were taken in December. The foliage on the Waseda University campus, although mostly gone now, was quite beautiful in late November and early December.

Once the leaves began to fall, the campus looked quite different in early morning, before the cleaning crews arrived. The place was blanketed in leaves.

Unfortunately, the Japanese are far too efficient at raking leaves. They do so on a daily basis so seeing the leaves on the ground is something of a rarity.

In the above photo you can see three grounds keepers removing the fallen leaves, pretty much as they fall. There were probably 10 people on campus doing nothing but making sure leaves were not under foot. I would have preferred to walk through a few inches of the stuff myself.

Posted on December 17th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: people, Tokyo, waseda university, 紅葉. Comments: 1

At this junction, you can take about eight different paths. One takes you to the top of Mt. Otsuka. The book we were following didn’t say anything about what you’d see there so we didn’t go to the top of Mt. Otsuka (which turned out to be a really good thing as it would have put us back another hour and likely left us stranded in the dark later in the day). Another route looked shorter and said (in Japanese) that it took you to the picnic area from which you can see Mt. Fuji. However, we could pretty much see the top, and it was surrounded in tall trees. So I don’t think you could really see Mt. Fuji from there unless you climbed a tree. Instead, we followed the above sign towards Mitake Jinja (御嶽神社), which is the Shinto shrine on top of the mountain. For some unknown reason the kanji is different (御岳山 for Mt. Mitake vs. 御嶽神社). Anyone know why?

As we neared the shrine area the number of people increased dramatically. Houses, shops, etc. also sprung up as we neared this remote location. The building pictured above had the strangest roof I have ever seen. It was all one building but appeared to have at least three or four completely different roofs.

Posted on December 7th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: hiking, japanese maple, mt. mitake, thatch roof, 紅葉. Comments: 3