I talked to some friends as well as my family over Thanksgiving weekend, which was really nice, and the one thing I keep getting asked is for photos… I guess I chat online about my life here and think out blog posts in my head so often that I always feel like I’ve already said what I wanted to say — except that I’ve only said it to one person or just myself. I feel like I’ve posted tons of photos of my straight permed hair or my town and my school, but I guess I really haven’t! So, since this weekend was luckily an absolutely beautiful, perfect November weather weekend, I went out with my sleek, sexy new camera and took tons of photos. Be forewarned: they’re nothing special; I wasn’t taking photos with an artistic eye, just snapping really quickly everything I looked at. There’s quite a few, too — but this is only about 1/15 of what I actually took… I guess when it comes to visual stimulation I get a little bit obsessive compulsive. I’ll take 10 or 15 pictures of a single wall or brick, or I’ll end up staring at a wooden railing for 8 or 9 minutes… it’s even worse when I look at artwork that I like. I guess that’s why I became an artist… Anyway, here you go:

These first few I took 2 days ago, before anyone asked me to send them photos. It was such a beautiful night, and the moon rise over my mountain (this is the view from my window) was so striking. No photo could do justice to how nice it really was. (Or maybe it was just my visual obsessiveness…)

So I went out to pay my bills and decided to take a bike detour through Kyoumachi, which is right in the center of Takefu, near the station. I guess this is where the ancient capital supposedly was… Now Kyoumachi is a really closed off area consisting mostly of a humongous temple, many shrines, and some beautiful old buildings, houses, and shops. The streets are paved with very pretty bricks too. I almost took my camera with me after seeing the beautiful moon, but stupidly I left it at home… so these were taken with my cellphone. Sadly, a lot of the beauty was lost though. The combination of the weather, the twilight, and the smell of autumn (burning leaves at the temple) were right out of a dream. (How’s that for a caption?)

This is one of the most famous views of Kyoumachi, the big, long wall near one of the temples.

And here’s a door in that wall.

This is AL Plaza (Aruplaza), the Takefu station plaza. You can see the many-story supermarket/tiny department store to the left, the station to the right, and a tree with yukitsuri (they were just put on the other night) in preparation for the winter snows. All of the prefectures that get heavy snow put yukitsuri obsessively on every single tree, bush, and shrub to keep them from breaking under the weight of the snow. I can’t imagine how unfun it must be to do this to every tree (especially in the huge gardens and parks), but they are awfully pretty.

Here’s where I work! That’s Century Plaza, just to the right of the train station. The blue signs in the window on the 2nd floor are Aeon, and those are 2 classrooms visible. Century Plaza is like a small, 2 story mall… only there’s nothing useful inside. Just Aeon, a glasses shop, and the Echizen International Center. And 4 vending machines to serve us all…

Okay, this is from today. I tried to capture the beautiful fall colors on the mountain, but again it’s impossible take in the grandeur of it with a photo. The atmospheric perspective changes the colors of the leaves that emphasizes how tall the mountain is, and you can also spot little shrines peeking out of the red trees… so pretty.

This is the entrance to the main shrine area in Kyoumachi. I took a nice bike ride with my camera this afternoon. Just for you guys!

Kyoumachi is hard to get into! It’s a few blocks square, but the intersections don’t go into it normally — it’s almost like a walled city with only a few alleyway entrances. Luckily on a bike it’s easy to get in, but even then the roads snake around like a maze through a beautiful old town.

Here’s the same gate from last night — only with a better camera. I wanted to include the other picture, though, because of the awesome light from the lantern.

Here’s another view of the “famous wall” I mentioned above… again, better detail, but less interesting lighting.

A close up of the lantern. My camera takes 12.1 megapixel images, so when I zoom all the way in I can see the nooks and ridges and rust on the iron of the lantern… it’s amazing!

The wall curves around a right angle, so you can stand here and look down both paths, and it feels like a trip into history.

A cemetery. This is really creepy: when I was holding the camera to snap this shot, the face recognition on my camera went wild. Normally, if someone enters the viewfinder, the face recognition puts a white square over their face automatically to make sure it stays in focus (high tech, yay!)… only when I shot the cemetery, my camera kept finding faces here and there for a few seconds… That hasn’t happened any other time I’ve used it!

Another view through the cemetery. This time I wanted to catch the mountain in the background. It looks smaller and less impressive in the photo…

This is the main entrance to this particular temple within Kyoumachi — this is the one that the long wall belongs to. I haven’t gone in, but WOW, the gate itself is too gorgeous… I’ve spent a long time just looking at it.

Bam! There it is!

The streets are so pretty, I just had to show you.

And check out this truck! It’s all windows! How cool is that?

Another temple; this one has some awesome views!

*sigh*

Cool bell tower.

Another shot, just to give some perspective.

This is the next shrine down the road, and part of the main, really big shrine that was the first photo in today’s set.

Some big stone obelisk of sorts, under the fall foliage.

Another view of this shrine area.

This is what houses in Takefu look like… they look old and right out of the movies, as opposed to the newer looking houses you see in big cities.

These buildings are one of the things I really love about Takefu.

It’s really a feast for the eyes.

Here is the main road going from the big shrine back to the station. You can see Century Plaza, the big hotel next door, and the mountain, our small town clock, as well as some pretty trees with yukitsuri.

Outside of Aeon in the daytime, so you can have a better idea of what it looks like.

And the Aruplaza again.

This actually isn’t Takefu… it’s Fukui 30 minutes north. The capital of the prefecture. I go there just about every Monday (Sundays I stay in and paint, Mondays I go to Fukui…) to meet Minako. Today I went to see a movie, but the one I wanted to see (Stardust) wasn’t playing anymore, so I had to see Biohazard 3 (Resident Evil 3) instead. While I was killing time waiting for the movie to start, I still had my camera, so I wandered around some of Fukui’s historic sites and snapped shots. Sadly, Fukui’s historic sites were never rebuilt after the firebombing in WW2. For some reason, they just built the new city on top of them, and later began to re-excavate them… so as a result, on random street corners and in lots in the middle of shopping areas, tiny sections of the old city walls, or moat areas, or sections of ancient houses have been rebuilt — but only in pieces. It’s almost like looking at a town that is full of dimensional time rifts, some of which lead to today, and some of which lead to 200 years ago (if you can forgive my nerdiness).

Well, that’s all you get for now. I hope it holds you over. I can’t write that much most of the time… but it was nice to show some photos. Takefu is an awesome town, and Fukui is an awesome prefecture. More later…