Some things around here change ever so quickly and catch the unwary completely off guard. This morning Lee, Sean and Ted set off for a country walk but seemingly arrived at the bus stop just a moment too late to catch our ride out to Ohara -- a number 17 bus pulled away just as we approached the departure point. The nearby schedule indicated another wouldn't appear for another thirty minutes. Bummer!
We waited patiently, but the scheduled bus never appeared. Finally, fifty minutes of waiting later, a bus pulled up -- but the driver indicated we needed to be waiting in a completely different place, across the road and down the block!
Turns out that Lee hadn't taken a local bus out to Ohara since the Sanjo Keihan bus terminal (which he remembers as a cavernous lot full of an exhaust-spewing bus fleet) had been replaced by a set of restaurants and a car park. In the process the bus stop map naturally had changed -- but the "new" one indicated the stopping point only for the buses headed downtown, not those running into the countryside.
We did finally manage to find the right stop, but that didn't end the surprises. Lee wanted Sean and Ted to see, among other sights, a huge pine in the (groomed) shape of Mt. Fuji just down the road from Sanzenin, our second objective for the day -- but, that huge pine, too, had disappeared!
Jakko In, our first stop, a small Buddhist temple retreat that once housed an exiled empress who had taken vows as a nun, also was altered beyond recognition. The temple had burned to the ground in May of 2000. Its rebuilding had taken until 2006, but the original Buddhist image couldn't be reclaimed. The replacement was carved as a faithful representation of the original but too brightly painted to capture the aura of the original. Likewise only a fraction of the thousand miniature images of the Buddha once displayed behind the larger icon had been replaced. In time, the patina of age will return and the image collection recreated, but right now only the beautiful garden holds attention.
And that, too, has changed -- a thousand year old tree at its center suffered severe damage in the fire and eventually died, only its trunk remaining as a (deified) reminder of what once was there.
Still and all, it was a great way to spend a leisurely day outside, despite the occasional shower, one allowing us all to polish our photographic skills while still catching our collective breath just a bit.
An extended gallery of our results can be found below. The initial collage is from Ted; the next two are the work of both Sean and Ted; the following six individual images are Sean's; and the final collage comes from Lee's still independent-minded camera. Enjoy!
And here's another of Ted's image sets, capturing our first encounter with dango (pounded rice balls drenched in miso soy sauce), a great -- if sticky -- mid-afternoon snack:
We waited patiently, but the scheduled bus never appeared. Finally, fifty minutes of waiting later, a bus pulled up -- but the driver indicated we needed to be waiting in a completely different place, across the road and down the block!
Turns out that Lee hadn't taken a local bus out to Ohara since the Sanjo Keihan bus terminal (which he remembers as a cavernous lot full of an exhaust-spewing bus fleet) had been replaced by a set of restaurants and a car park. In the process the bus stop map naturally had changed -- but the "new" one indicated the stopping point only for the buses headed downtown, not those running into the countryside.
We did finally manage to find the right stop, but that didn't end the surprises. Lee wanted Sean and Ted to see, among other sights, a huge pine in the (groomed) shape of Mt. Fuji just down the road from Sanzenin, our second objective for the day -- but, that huge pine, too, had disappeared!
Jakko In, our first stop, a small Buddhist temple retreat that once housed an exiled empress who had taken vows as a nun, also was altered beyond recognition. The temple had burned to the ground in May of 2000. Its rebuilding had taken until 2006, but the original Buddhist image couldn't be reclaimed. The replacement was carved as a faithful representation of the original but too brightly painted to capture the aura of the original. Likewise only a fraction of the thousand miniature images of the Buddha once displayed behind the larger icon had been replaced. In time, the patina of age will return and the image collection recreated, but right now only the beautiful garden holds attention.
And that, too, has changed -- a thousand year old tree at its center suffered severe damage in the fire and eventually died, only its trunk remaining as a (deified) reminder of what once was there.
Still and all, it was a great way to spend a leisurely day outside, despite the occasional shower, one allowing us all to polish our photographic skills while still catching our collective breath just a bit.
An extended gallery of our results can be found below. The initial collage is from Ted; the next two are the work of both Sean and Ted; the following six individual images are Sean's; and the final collage comes from Lee's still independent-minded camera. Enjoy!
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