Light-ups and leaf peepers

Growing up in New England, there was a mild influx of people wanting to come see the fall colors, leaf peepers.  Well it is over the top here in Kyoto.  My host indicates that you can hear accents from all over Japan, and there have been tour buses lined up along our street every day for several weeks.  The traffic jams and overcrowded buses are putting the place into weekend gridlocks in our part of town.

But there is no question that the colors are spectacular!

A few koi shaped leaves
Hanging from the dark branches
Swimming upstream.

The cherry leaves are almost gone, but they were a grand array of orange, tangerine, persimmon, rust, red, and other shades, leaf by leaf.  The momiji (Japanese maple) are mostly red/scarlet/burgundy.  But some of their leaves are yellow and orange -- even mixed on the same tree and mixed on the same leaf. The ginko are bright yellow, and they place a pile of sunshine at the base of each tree.

The ephemeral nature of the leaves is emphasized by the constant sweeping.

Bamboo broom chasing
The cherry leaves -- awaiting
Tomorrow's wind.

It seems to be good etiquette to keep the leaves off the sidewalks, and it is a constant effort.

In the evenings, the various temples have "light-ups" with lights on the trees.  It is quite pretty, and the lights are not not adding color, but highlighting what is actually there.  The temple near us must be quite famous for its light-up -- there are security guards at each intersection for several blocks around to keep out the cars, and make sure no one gets run over by the oversized tour buses that are negotiating the narrow streets.

At several locations we have seen posters that track the stage of the momiji leaf colors at each of about 20 temples!  Each day some industrious person adds stickers where needed to track the progress from green to part red to red, then rust and gone-by.