Autumn in Japan ・日本の秋 — through the years.
Below I offer a few newly-found, but certainly not “new,” autumn photos taken over the years (from 1984 and 2009). I’ve taken more recent ones, in more recent autumns in Japan, but I thought these would suffice for this year. I may update if or when I run across more share-worthy photos.
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Kinkaku-ji, the Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Kyoto. 1984
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Mist in Kurama. October 2003.
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Looking towards Shinnyo-do Temple. Kyoto. November 2009.
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Tea Break During Rice Harvest. Tsuda. 1984.
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Kiyomizu-dera. Kyoto. Fall 2001.
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On Jingu no michi, looking towards the Higashiyama. Kyoto. 2003.
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Ladder. Kurama. November 2003.
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Along Tetsugaku no Michi (“Philosopher’s Path”). Kyoto. 2003.
For much more on, and more photos from, Philosopher’s Path, click here.
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Evening “light up” at Eikan-do Temple. Kyoto. 2003.
Eikan-do (see photo immediately above) is one of my favorite temples in Kyoto. I highly recommend checking out Eikan-do’s website. In May 2008 one of the head priests granted a group I was guiding an hour-long audience to discuss Eikan-do and some of the basic tenets of Buddhist theology and philosophy. Disclosure: I had a hand in editing one of Eikan-do’s web pages.
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One, more recent, additional photo:
Facing North on Kawabata Street, Kyoto. November 2009.
LetsJapan 
One of the marinas in which I work also is a beautifully landscaped yacht club. One of my favorite trees is a Japanese maple, one of the few around here that’s consistently beautiful in the autumn. Somehow, I’d never quite made that association that Japanese maples have their name because of – well, Japan. Now that I’ve enjoyed the Eikan-do website, I’ve got that straightened out in my mind a bit.
The beauty of Japan is obvious, especially the temples and such. There’s a different kind of interest in some of these photos – the juxtaposition of densely urban life and nature. The rice harvest photo is my favorite. It’s like seeing a cornfield in the middle of downtown Houston.
Thanks always for stopping by and for the kind words. Glad you figured that out about the Japanese Maple!
The rice harvest photo actually has a companion pic of men in a field, If they weren’t taken the same day, it was at least the same week or so. That photo, the other one, is in my first “Autumn” photo essay (link at the very top of this one). Tsuda (津田), where both photos were taken, is about a 10 minute bus ride out of Hirakata, which itself is halfway between Kyoto and Osaka. Hirakata (or, “Hirakata-shi” 枚方市) is where my college, the one I was an exchange student at, Kansai Gaidai, is located. Every weekday morning I’d leave my homestay family’s house and ride the bike they kindly let me us up to the combination train station / bus stand, just a five minute ride. Then take the bus to Hirakata Train Station, the Keihan Line. There I and several other exchange students, a few who rode the same bus, several more who would converge on Hirakata Station from elsewhere nearby, would go from one side of the station to the other side and catch a second bus for another ten-minute ride to campus.
As buses driving the route from Hirakata Station to campus were plentiful, leaving every few minutes, we never really had to worry about making any particular time-of-day schedule. That’s why we foreigners often took a little break before getting on the second bus and stopped by the McDonald’s right next to Hirakata Station and would have an order of fries and a coke before the second leg of our morning commute. The McDonald’s was a standing one only, meaning that it had a few small, torso-high tables set up right in front of the window you ordered from, set inside a larger building across from and facing the station, but no inside proper and now seats to sit down on.