A flowering Spring, in riotous light and rain. Fragrances were held in tiny sweets, skies dappled white-pink, the clear air spiked with sake-sting.

10/10 for the fleshy ten. Sensouji.

Maddening crowds, clouds of blossoms, tacky stalls - Nakamise-dori.

Androgynes dominate.

Closed for the day. Nakamise-dori.

Night at Sensouji. The air clasped incense. Lone cyclists, with umbrellas and Family Mart groceries, rang their way through the silence.

One of the many tiny stalls lining the small backstreets in Asakusa.

The Sakura Hostel, nice beds, & cute staff. Perfectly pleasant if your bunkmates didn't have stinky feet.

Early morning, Asakusa.

Hanami season is getting drunk on blue sheets under a Sunday sun.

The Tokyo National Museum, Ueno Park.

The frenzy of Shinjuku.

Drunk on green tea in the Kamogawa yukata.

Green tiles turning white, Meiji Jingu.

Ocean.

The Meiji Jingu has a nice museum of lacquered objets and a good canteen.

It is easy, if one is not finicky, to immerse oneself in Oedo Onsen Monogatari's artificial charms.

When the sun hangs low, and the boughs bulge with blossoms, there is a strange and still magic.

Gion's open season. For a mere fraction of the cultivation and expense usually required, one could get heady on the powdered pretties.

The Case Against Plastic.

The first of many elegant hurdles - getting past perfectly accoutred entrances, in measured steps. Later all duck-waddly on sake, of course.

A geisha tinklingly hurries.

The postmodern guts of Kyoto Station.

Arashiyama, by the banks of the river, on a clear day.

The people thinned out, and the wind brought bamboo sounds.

I deliberately took a wrong turn, for it was a lovely day.

Adorable darumon. Surely the most hirsute.

Twice a year, Kiyomizudera blandishes her oiled struts in a gaudy, marvellous display.

Ginkakuji's Zen garden. Modern, antique. Sun-bleached and careless.

In Kyoto beauty is often lying by the road for sale.

Ugly Kyoto at its best.

Who knows what one might become on the other side.

All the screens different. Tiny dragonflies hovered above the lilies, in colours deep and fresh.

A close-up.

And one day a temple sprung from the tree's side.

Cherry blossom-pastries, from little shops lining festive, cobbled ways.

Kiyomizudera

Evening in Kyoto.

Wood & cloth.

A long path in Horyu-ji, the oldest surviving wooden complex in Japan.

The vulgar sheen of Kinkakuji.

Softbank isn't a bank, Pantone isn't a shampoo, and someone isn't averse to an extra million or two.

Countless Inari torii.

At the end of a 4-km trek up Fushimi Inari - a bowl of steaming egg udon in a little mountain teashop.

Rain in Kyoto. Peril among willows on a person-wide footbridge.

Early morning in my lovely kyo-machiya (old merchant's house) minshuku in Kyoto.

Osaka - warrens of insalubrious alleys.

To a templed-out mind these rocks, in the shifting play of cloud and sun, really became a dragon loping upon waves.

The light was fading, the air chill, and the vast cemetary complex of Okunoin was on the right.

Anything but monastic, my stay in Ekoin. Earnest apprentice monks served steaming dishes in lacquered wares, then laid out a futon, warm and lovely. Post-dinner brought a soak in the boiling temple bath, vital in the cold, thin mountain night.