kyoto: nijo-jo

[escapewindow]

[kyoto - nijo-jo]:

Nijo-jo, or "2nd St. Castle", was the Shogun's palace way back when. We first visited in the daytime, in the rain, shortly before closing.

We rushed to see the inside, which was disappointing. They kept the entire place dim to preserve the painted screens, and it was difficult to see anything, really. I had a little tour guide headset in English that didn't really illuminate things for me.

But the garden was beautiful.

Caught a couple of cute pics of my parents too =)

At the end there was a looped recording played over the loudspeakers, of a clip of Auld Lang Syne and a female voice, in Japanese and English, saying "Thank you for visiting, but the gate's about to close so get your butt over here". Loose paraphrase.

After we got to the gate we found that they were going to re-open later that evening, with the garden lit up. So we made plans to go later in the week.

[nijo-jo at night]:

There was a pretty big crowd at night, but the clouds were pretty and I already had practice at handheld ~1 second shots... so I just took my time and got lots of photos I'm happy with.

I loves me some night photography. The entire set is here.

I had previously missed seeing some koto players... the koto is the instrument my mother played. I caught them this time around. Very pleasing timbre. That reminds me, I have even more photos on my laptop that didn't get uploaded... more vacation snapshot-y than works of art, but still.

I hope you're not on dialup =\

Only one more post, I swear =)