The Painterly Staircase

For drop-sheet elegance, this not quite concealed staircase gives you pause to look twice.  Watching your step was never a more elegant occupation than when navigating this descending piece of drapery. Perhaps it's the tonal cohesion, or the possibility of tripping up that converts the stairs into a fleet of foot ephemera.

Pedigreed Manicure with Scarabaeidae

  Late January, I find a  luminescently lovely Anoplognathus porosus in the house giving me an excuse for this chi -chi stylish but temporary fingernail decal.  The Christmas Beetle, perfect brooch from childhood's Decembers, grips on, needing a careful extrication to set it on its way.

Anoplognathus porosus

Anoplognathus porosus

arayashima - ground cover

Sonic Avenue

The bamboo grove's groove, besides its striated light in nuanced green, the interplay of on and off, is a three part sonic sandwich of rustling leaves, creaking crossed poles and then the every now and now, clap as two stems play their greatest hits. 
And that fence, that runs along the lane-way's curve, it hardly says a word, ...

Sportswear in Tale of the Genji

While we have Lycra, these young princess of the Heian period had plenty of sleeve and a lot of practise, one might suppose from this tableau, of not treading on the hem with ones toes. The Costume Museum in Kyoto takes Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of the Genjii as its device of exposition, giving the scenes a charming, one might say novel, cohesion.
The museum is a little hard to find but the post cards alone would be worth the feeling of dwindling certainty  I experienced  as the little 3rd floor museum stubbornly did not appear for quite a while.  The oddness of its scale  and the way the display is raised up to nearly chest height, renders the viewer at eye level with characters, who are so involved in their business that they don't seem to notice you at all.

Room with Two Views

Lookjing through the main hall ( Hojo) in the temple Garden Tenryuji (天龍寺, Tenryūji),  another temple (Kuri I think) might be just a mirage. The lovely moire pattern in the wooden floor, polished by meditations looks back over the shoulder of the viewer.