Three Views of a Sunset ~ Beauty of Japan

A little bit of a cloudy sunset, but a nice one regardless. I snapped three similar but slightly different views of it. Rather than pick my favorite, I figured I'd share them all and let you guys pick your favorite.

As I mentioned in this post, where you can see a similar shot from a few days before, this is the Oto River, which once upon a time was a pretty important river in these parts. It is still a main river and is used for many things such as the fireworks festival every august. A little further upriver it is lined with cherry blossom trees, so it also looks quite nice in Spring.

The autumn sky often seems cloudy like this, at least in this area in Japan. We often get rain around this time, and even the occasional typhoon. The clouds hang around to remind us of the constant threat.

I wasn't on a big photowalk this time, just walking near the river with my oldest. He's still at that age where he wants to be in every single photo I took, so it seems like most of my photos from this walk include him. Oh well—I don't mind. Soon enough he'll be too old to want to take walks with me and I'll still be doing these but alone, so gotta enjoy now as much as I can.

By tradition in autumn evening is considered the best time of day. That goes way back to Sei Shonagon when she published her book of thoughts and observations in 1002. It may have been tradition before her too, she may have just been the first to write it down. She wrote:

秋は、夕暮。夕日のさして、山の端いと近うなりたるに、烏の寝どころへ行くとて、三つ四つ、二つ三つなど、飛び急ぐさへあはれなり。まいて雁などの列ねたるがいと小さく見ゆるは、いとをかし。日入り果てて、風の音、虫の音など、はたいふべきにあらず。

In autumn, the evenings: the blazing sun has sunk very close to the edges of the mountains, and the crows, hurrying to their roost in threes and fours or twos and threes, are such a sight. Even more charming is the sight of formations of wild geese in the distant sky, like specks. When the sun has sunk, oh how enchanting to hear the sound of the wind in the growing darkness and the songs of autumn insects.

There is a legend that the geese carry a branch of wood in their mouths as they fly to Japan so that they rest on the branch when floating in the ocean. Then when they arrive, they drop the branch at that arrival spot and pick it up again in the spring when they fly back north. Well, I didn't see any geese when I was out so I can't comfirm that legend.

Evening was starting around when these photos were taken. It's still warm from the day but late enough that the evening noises that Shonagon enjoyed so much are beginning.

As usual, I also included the photos in monochrome. Let me know which you prefer in the comments.

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