Notes from Gifu

There are two great times to visit Japan, when the cherry blossoms bloom in the Spring and when the changing colors in the Fall. In both cases, the optimum period of viewing these changes is a matter of weeks or less. It is all a matter of timing.

For the past month or so, my wife has been checking the Internet and the NHK News to see when that optimum period would be this year. It is a very inexact science. In past years we had seen the changing colors in Arashiyama-Saga and the Kiyomizu areas of Kyoto, but this year she wanted to see the colors in Nara. Partly, she wanted to see it there because last time it was beautiful there, and partly because she has been watching the rebroadcast of the 1986 NHK daily drama series “Miyako no Kaze” that takes place there.

We got to Nara while the leaves were still changing, but the crowds are not as bad as those in Kyoto. The best place we saw for seeing the change of colors was at Isuien Garden, just North of Nara National Museum. There, the changing colors was almost complete. The best place to feed the deer was in the shopping street leading up to Todaiji Temple.

To see what the colors looked like, check out this gallery.