Fushimi Inari Shrine

 While on a recent trip to Kyoto we visited the Fushimi Inari shrine. This shrine is famous for its torii, red Shinto archways. There are around 2000 of them, all bought by various businesses, which follow a pathway up the mountainside.

Overdue August / September Update!

Its been some time since I last posted an update on what I have been up to, mainly due to a trip to the UK, a wedding and having my arm in cast for months following a careless slip on our living room floor! The upside of this, I guess, is having had plenty of experience of the Japanese hospital system.

I also passed a milestone recently, having been in Osaka for just over a year, the time has just flown past! There have certainly been many ups and downs over the year, but overall its been an interesting experience and I look forward to seeing what the next year has in store.

Anyway, here is a selection of photos of various things of interest over the past couple of months:

Peaches kindly sent to us by my wife's grandparents.

A firework display held alongside Yodo river, this one is a Pokemon ball!

If you look closely you can see Doraemon's face.

A Zen garden in Kyoto, built by a poet.

Osaka Science Museum, they have a rather bad cockroach problem!

The Lotus pond outside the museum.

The museum also has this interesting tunnel of gourds!

An old electronics store in Nipponbashi.

A summer festival in Kyoto

Snow, shopping arcades and Kyoto.

As you may have noticed, its been a while since I last posted anything here, largely due to work commitments, so I thought I would post a quick rundown of anything noteworthy from the last two months.

To start off, here are some photos of the recent snowfall in Osaka city, the first proper snow I have seen in the city.

Next up is a visit to a cafe called Mole which is built inside the vaults of an old bank. The Cafe serves very good, if a little expensive coffee.

On a considerably less cold day, we recently visited Tenjinbashi-suji, supposedly the longest shopping arcade in Japan! We also made a brief stop to check out the nearby temple.

I made my second visit to Kyoto a few weeks back, in order to see an exhibition by the Japanese Illustrator Junzo Terada. The exhibition was held inside a large department store next to Kyoto station and was very impressive, with work ranging from posters to models and animation.

We also spent time browsing a number of craft shops in town.

The Exhibition flyer.

A Tanooki lined stairway

From the top of the stairway

Well that's about it for the update, hopefully I will find the time to write on a more regular basis, watch this space!