Bisdak Babbles

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a photo hunt entry! I’ve been very busy these past few weeks that I didn’t have much time browsing through my photos.

Fortunately, I have lots of photos of bridges so I get to join today. Osaka has many rivers, thus, it has lots of bridges, too. Here’s one of my favorites. This was taken in spring last year after I visited a cherry blossoms orchard. I’m also using this as a header in my other blog, Exploring Kansai.

This one’s also a favorite:

Same with most of the photos in this blog, these were taken using my old phone camera. I used Photofiltre to “revive” the colors.

The Universal Studios Japan (USJ) is just a few stations away from where I live. I’ve lived in Osaka for more than 2 years and I haven’t been there. Finally, last Sunday, Kay and I took advantage of the one-year pass promo at USJ. USJ usually put the one-year pass on sale around November to the first day of February. It was the promo’s last day last Sunday. I thought that most of the Japanese got their tickets way before the last day but I was wrong. The registration hall was crowded and we had to wait in line for more than an hour! It was already running late so we did not have a chance to try a single attraction. But it’s OK. I still have a year to try them all.

Just a glimpse of USJ:

Biwa-ko or Lake Biwa is the largest lake in Japan, and Omimaiko is one of places surrounding the lake.  Together with some friends, I had the chance of having an overnight stay there.  But, we didn’t go there for sightseeing.  Anyway, it took us about an hour from Osaka to the Omimaiko station by the JR Special Rapid Service.  Some Japanese friends told me that the place is an “inaka” (countryside, rural) and they weren’t just exaggerating. This ticket collection machine proved it:

I thought that just like any other ticket machine, I only had to insert the ticket upon exiting. A station staff have to collect it manually. From the station to the beach, I didn’t notice any convenient store, but as expected, there were my vending machines.  The travel was really worth it because the place was beautiful.  I didn’t get to swim, though.   The temperature was OK during the day, but at night and early morning, it was chilly.  Enough of these chit-chats and let me show you some photos:

Lake Biwa’s breathtaking sunrise. Photo courtesy of Lu:

I’m late posting my photo hunt entry! I hope I haven’t posted these yet as photo hunt entries. These are 2007 spring pictures of Kyoto - my favorite place in Japan, and I think the most beautiful, too!

Happy photo hunting!

I love autumn and here’s the reason why…

At Osaka Castle grounds, Fall 2007

These are just short spans of the very LONG hiking trail at the Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine in Kyoto. This shrine is dedicated to Inari, the Shinto god of rice. The 4km trail is covered with thousands of these orange torii (gateways), offerings made by worshippers - this explains those markings on the toriis.

Uphill

Downhill
The trail stretches to the top of the Inari-san hill. Good thing we went there early autumn last year. It took us almost 2 hours to cover the whole trail.
Here’s Kagz and Me, near the main gate of the shrine:
By the way, have you seen Memoirs of a Geisha? Remember that part where young Sayuri ran through a path covered with orange gates? That was in Fushimi Inari Taisha. Wishing you all a very long and nice weekend. Thank you for dropping by!

The pictures below show why I fell in love with Seishin-chuo, Kobe (the location of the previous company). I roamed around at lunch break today and took the following pictures. Due to extreme sunlight, some pictures seem to be damaged… I even got a “too much heat” warning from my cellphone! Hope you’ll enjoy the autumn views. ^-^

After a stressful day of squeezing technical stuffs and blogs into our brains, this refreshing sight marks the end of the day. This is what we see as soon as we step out of the office…