The Great Buddha in Kamakura, finished in 1252, was once housed in a giant hall, but that washed away in a tsunami in 1495. Now he is outdoors, and we arrived at just the right time, having hiked the Daibutsu Hiking Trail to get to him (once we found out how to get on it from our last stop at the Kaizoji temple), to catch him bathed in the soft light just before sunset. For those interested, he is 11.4 metres (or just over 37 feet) tall.
In Kamakura, while walking from the Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu to Kaizoji Temple we had to wait for a train to pass. A little down the tracks somebody was having a bonfire and the train dragged the smoke from that up the tracks to the crossing. The smoke seems to give the track a somewhat ghostly appearance; if you look closely, you can also see rays of sunlight penetrating it.
At the entrance to the area that houses the Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu and the Kamakura National Treasure Museum are a couple of ponds. The one on the left as you walk in had these trees in full autumn colours as its backdrop and a line of people with cameras (and cellular phones being used as cameras) taking pictures of them.
Another hotel, another view. This one completely different from the Yokohama view! I am now in the Imperial Hotel in the heart of Tokyo (the centre of the Ginza district is just a few minutes walk from here). Earlier this week Japan’s Princess Sayako was married here at this very hotel and started her new life as a regular person (losing her royal status by marrying a commoner).
The view from my room at the Grand Intercontinental Hotel, Yokohama. I am here for the ET 2005 trade show, where I presented a seminar today.
A flower, which I have not managed to identify yet, taken outside of the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. I took several shots on the same morning, but I was rushed so most are not as good as I would have liked, nor do they do the flowers justice.
Took an after dinner walk around parts of Bayport in Alameda looking for houses with halloween decorations. Nothing like the decorations I saw last year at Ingleside in San Francisco, but lots of houses had carved pumpkins and were feeding the trick or treat kids. The buried witch is from the house I am awarding nominating as best decorated in Bayport.
Not a great shot, but then I was sitting on a window sill with the 300mm lens at full zoom trying to catch these guys as they flew by during San Francisco’s fleet week air show. They are, for those that don’t know, the US Navy’s Blue Angels.
On the edge of Golden Gate Park is the Conservatory of Flowers. Didn’t go in as I was on my way to somewhere else and did not have a lot of time in the park the morning I took this shot.
Also known as the Scorpionfish, or even a Hawaiian Turkeyfish. This one is another resident of the Maui Ocean Center, but we really did see some of these in Kapalua Bay. In fact, we saw a lot of fish in Kapalua Bay – many more than we saw at the reefs off of Lanai’i during our snorkel trip there. Of course, we did actually see reef sharks and green sea turtles, the latter up close and personal, on the snorkel trip…