Subways

New graffiti.. Pretty good. The inside was all black with a string of characters leading you through. Very dark spacey and fairy tale in one.

Stroll Around

Nice pond in a suburb, .innit mistah!

Fairy

On the tree, and a very late Merry Christmas ☆

Christmas Eve

Beautiful red Poinsettia and Christmas cake, heavy, dark, alcoholic and stuffed with dried fruit kind.

Winchester Cathederal

Pictures at dusk, leaving the Christmas Fayre.

Nearly Christmas

Oxford Street Uniclo

Funny that in the U.K. the sign is in katakana and in Japan it's in the English alphabet. The London one looked really funky.

Covent Garden Buskers

Two of a dancing and often comical string quartet, amazing that they can do all that and play so beautifully.

Fishing in the Freezing Cold

Over the Bosphorus Strait, last glimpse of Istanbul.

Bosphorus Strait

Looking from east to the west side.

Hookah Smoking

Relaxing in the evening drinking tea and smoking their water pipes.

Turkish Sweets

Were delicious, sticky sweet buttery pastries with lots of nuts. I was taking pictures in this shop, and when I  turned round and these two guys were waiting for their photo to be taken too!

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

Huge, amazing it's so old, completed in 537 it was the religious focal point of the eastern orthodox church for nearly 1000 years..

Wandering Down

An Istanbul street at sunset.

blue mosque and moon..

still in istanbul, i saw so much in so few days. really is the crossing point between east and west, two sides combined in one very busy city.

Palace in Istanbul

Was absolutely gorgeous!

Sea of Marmara

Early morning in Istanbul.

Skating on Thin Ice

Another morning shot

Another morning in Southampton, riding past the golf course.

First Morning

At home in the U.K...

mountain shape city....

is what yamagata shi means in english, and indeed the city is surrounded by mountains..

rain was on the way....

sea of cloud..

it was beautiful..

paradise..

is the name of the run, and today it was, the sun was shining and hardly anyone around ; )

moon mountain..

in the distance...

at the top..

of mt. zao.. jizo-san, patron saint of travellers (or something like that), always pay a visit first time to the top in winter, eventually he'll be up to his neck in snow.

first snow...

always seems to come when i have to drive 40 minutes into the countryside to teach at kindergarten, this is an oddly designed public building, always like the way the snow sits on top of the silver ball and the red spirally stairway..

smell of autumn..

burning leaves in the temple precinct..

giant pumpkin...

i HAD to take a picture of this huge vegetable, in the supermarket, late at night, with people giving the messily dressed white girl with a camera funny looks.... taking pictures in a supermarket is not something we do i guess!

morning yoga class...

waiting for students to come..such a lovely room to teach in with the straw mats, sunshine and mountain views ; )

car rambling...

it's so much fun to go off up unknown tracks in the mountains....as longs as you don't get stuck..!

waiting....

for my husband to come and extricate my car from its akward postion on a mountain road....stuck again!

taking photos...

while driving around...couldn't resist this sky ; )

last mountain yoga..

for the year...ooohh was it a cold practice. but the air smelt sooo good!

test drive....

up a mountain, yep, my car is really fixed this time...yippeeee!

autumn nearly over..

time to get serious...

about gourd lamp making, with some serious electronics shopping and a crash course in LED wirement!

searching for gourds..

to make lamps, more difficult than one imagines! until i cycle past a small field where HUGE gourds were hanging, i left a note and this lovely man called and give me a few smaller ones! he wouldn't part with the giant ones...apparently he paints them in winter..

supposed to be making...

a lamp from a gourd, but mine ended up a wingless goose...complete with moustache!

kaminoyama castle..

had a lovely little hot spring foot bath outside, very relaxing sitting round chatting with feet being boiled ; ) the water was HOT!

nice display of...

sake cups in a soba restaurant...soba (buckwheat noodles) was good too!

overheating....

on the way back from the beach on a mountain road my poor car overheated and starting dripping bright green ooze, oh dear! i tried to fix it, but it just dripped and steamed more, it really didn't look very happy, so my husband had to leave work and come and rescue me!!

no waves....

but i loved the dotted stripe of clouds...it was such a beautiful day 　☆

early halloween party...

art college sunset....

art school festival..

cakes, aren't they cute!!

taiko drumming..

tohoku university of art and design..

beautiful building, reflecting the shape of the surrounding mountains..nearly full moon! they even have a funky painted bus that does the college route..

kannon sama

the bodhisattva of complassion, in sanskrit her name is Avalokitesvara, and this particular version only comes out every 12 years, in the year of the rat...so i was lucky to see her, and when i did there was a group of ladies chanting, under all those ribbons in the picture below..

inside the temple..

so simple, but colourful, most of it was open ... no glass, i guess it's shuttered up in rain and snow....loved the ribbons leading to the altar and the paintings on the ceiling..