The photos filling my phone from October include dense fog in my neighborhood, scenes from Golden State Valkyries games, hiragana and katakana flash card quiz results... and then the wing of an airplane and scenes from Kyoto, Japan.
My fifth trip to Japan was dedicated wholly to Kyoto.
I've been to Kyoto twice before, a favorite place thanks to the many gorgeous gardens and historic places, plus a serious culture and craft capitol. One of the best things about having been there before was that I had no mandatory activities: I already visited nearly every famous place on prior visits, and my favorites more than once. So I could enjoy my return visit in a relaxed way, and spend time exploring with an infrared camera to develop work for a book project.
With my trips spaced decades apart, I could enjoy the complex mix of being familiar with the city generally, but unfamiliar with the many changes natural to any place where many people live. I would be convinced I was in a new-to-me area, but then would turn a corner, recognize something, and have my memories place me relative to personal landmarks from prior trips. Along the way, new buildings would appear, and I would add them to my personal collection of memorable places...
I was able to visit new-to-me places that hadn't fit into previous visits, and did so while melting: despite my mid-October timing, temperatures were often in the high 80s (on the quaint US Fahrenheit scale, call it around 29.4 C), and my infrared camera required full sun, so I was usually out in the peak of the heat despite being a mild-weather person.
It was a relief that there are so many superb museums to escape from the sun while also having great art experiences.
The Seika show was a reminder that if you have a passion for a particular artistic medium to take it as far as you want/can.
Throughout the trip, I was able to indulge myself in swooning over elaborate roof details, which will be apparent throughout my images.
Outside of the government-run cultural sites, traditional buildings or non-traditional buildings incorporating traditional materials also provided abundant visual stimulation. This
yakisugi wall, for example, is brilliantly executed: the planks are charred so uniformly, and the texture is stunning. Any ordinary block could hold several bland but practical buildings, plus one visual treasure. While this is true in many places, the fact that those treasures are likely to be some advanced and specifically Japanese craft made my walks feel special, not so much like 'a living museum' but more like 'incorporating great past ideas into modern life.'
While my photos are dominated by the traditional building styles that Kyoto is known for, especially for heritage sites, it is also a modern city. There are subways, commuters, apartment complexes, traffic, shopping malls, schools... (These are things I don't photograph so often at home, either: they are useful, but not often novel or inspiring.)
As someone who also lives in a tourist town, I understand how strange it can be to live in a place where tourists clumsily wander into your hometown and get in the way, and how complex it can be to be both welcoming and... selectively resentful of their presence. Kyoto has grown, and Japan has been awash in visitors in recent years to the point of "overtourism," where tourists have become actively disruptive to locals who aren't directly involved in the hospitality industry. With so many heritage sites, Kyoto is popular with domestic AND foreign tourists, and so key cultural sites I visited would have entire school groups on one side, and foreign tour groups on the other.
Comically, it is the foreign tourists who would try to get photos of themselves alone in a crowded and popular place while standing in a crowd. [laughing emoji]...
[On the topic of photographing people, which I enjoy doing in these crowded settings: due to software tools stealing people's faces for unauthorized uses, I'm posting fewer photos of people than I'd like, and usually show people from afar or behind.]
