Waiting Outside

I’m sure I mentioned it already but bikes and Kyoto are a match made in heaven. The city is largely flat and you can get anywhere in the city with little to no effort by bike. I was apprehensive about this fact for some reason while we were there so we only took out bikes made available for us once which I look back on and regret. Maybe it was just that I love taking subways and trains places and the trains in Kyoto are charming and affordable so it was hard to resist.

Bikes littered the city though, at least the more traditional parts of it. It was hard to go anywhere without one zipping by and if your ever there I highly suggest you consider it as a key mode of transportation. What better way to see a city than to take it slow? Enjoy the photo? Wallpaper links below!

Kurama-dera

We did our best to balance our time in Kyoto, leaving plenty of space for simply traveling between places or taking the long way somewhere. This did send us to the wrong spot once or twice including our attempt to make our way out to this beautiful temple in mountains just outside of the city. It’s a beautiful place to visit and because it was the off season and we arrived at the end of the day there was hardly anyone there at all. Even with only a short time available to us to explore the cliff dwelling temple we were able to soak in some of the misty charm and glow of the complex and its many vistas, temples, and steep pathways. It was a beautifully calm place, as was the tiny town at its entrance. This image is but a tiny, perhaps common view but it quickly brings back fond memories. Links for a wallpaper below!

For Tomorrow

Looking through photos I took in Japan four years ago I find it impossible to believe that it has been that long since traveling there. I had to recount the years a few times on my fingers just to triple check but its true. This could be because my life has sped by exponentially faster and faster as big shifts swing with a wider circumference as I get older. The weight of that spin and its billowing momentum makes me wonder if there is any way to stop a year from going by without it feeling like an abrupt cut in a film with a lazy caption reading “one year later”.

Or, lets look at this in a more optimistic light. Maybe the reason looking through these photos I feel as though it were just yesterday because the trip left that much of an impact on me. After a lifetime of curiosity I had finally made it to Japan, maybe just for a short time, sure, but I do remember it fondly. The movement of Kyoto, the taste of each thing we ate, the color of the walls and the feeling of dodging raindrops with a large plastic umbrella bought at a 7-11. Memories from this trip have been surprisingly sticky in my mind, especially when digging around through photos taken while there. My heart lights up a bit as memories start to flood in, holding loosely onto one another in a wave of “oh yeah, I remember that!” moments.

The photograph here felt like a good place to start in sharing some of these visual memories with anyone stopping by. I have a few cropped already and will continue to share and dig through them until I feel like I have run out of interesting things to post from the trip. The photo here today taken at a temple in Kyoto feels apt somehow as I start to notice my own hopes, prayers, and dreams start to neatly pile up around me. Tonight, sitting here in silence on any one random winter night, I find myself again considering an ongoing theme in my personal thoughts going into this year about time and its passing and find connections and metaphors everywhere I turn.

Or, lets look at this in a more, “hey, John, I’m just here for the wallpapers, wheres the link?” Oh, right. Ahem, links below, stop back by soon, lets see what momentum I can get going in 2018 shall we?

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