Early Fall Photos

I has been a while since I have posted here, so now is a good time to post an update. It has now been a little more than two years since I have been living here in Ako and I suppose I have gotten used to many things about being here. It was a mostly uneventful summer since it was hot and humid out and I was recovering from surgery — nothing too bad but enough to encourage me to mostly stay home. But now that I am more or less recovered and the weather has cooled off I am back to exploring. My brother Jim has kindly sent me an old camera of his, and because Roxi is off adventuring in Central Asia I have started exploring again, this time with a fancy digital SLR. Fall has not yet hit its stride, and the green of summer is only starting transform into the vivid colors of fall, but change is in the air.

Last weekend I hiked up Shoshazan, a mountain just north of Himeji the top of which is home to a thousand year old Tendai Buddhist temple complex called Engyoji. I have been there a few times already and did a post about it once already, but here are some more pictures. It is a stunning place to visit. I’ll try to make it back there again soon to see the Japanese red maples in all of their fall glory.

I have also been taking the camera along on my explorations of Ako. These next photos are from Otakadayama, the small mountain behind where I live, Ako castle, and the seaside. It has been interesting taking a camera around as I feel like I am learning how to see things in a fresh way.