Turning

Central Tokyo is just starting to turn. The trees are turning an amazing mix of red, yellow, and green. It's a beautiful time of year, and it seems such a shame to have to work in an office during daylight hours so bright and vivid as this.

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With a polarising filter, the sky is really vivid

In around a week, autumn will be all around us. The above tree, central to the campus here at the University of Tokyo, turns an amazing yellow by the end of the year. I estimate that in the first week of december, this area of the campus will be yellow, if previous years are anything to go by.

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However, next week, I'll be in Okinawa for work - when I return I think it'll be impossible to walk around Tokyo without rustling in leaves!

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Leaves weren't the only thing turning

Birds of a feather

Spend any length of time in Japan, and you'll see crows. There are hardly any pigeons in all of Tokyo, but there are a few. These big crows rule the roost. Nets are thrown over the bags of rubbish in the mornings, (in a futile attempt) to stop the crows ripping open the bags before the collection people arrive. The crows are loud, and are not easily scared. In fact, I think that the local Japanese people are more scared of the crows than the crows are of them!

At first glance, they're evil looking black birds, but look closer and you'll see very clever animals, with feathers of a deep, midnight purple. I personally like the crows a lot, and will endeavour to take a close-up photo in the near future. Until then, I wanted to share this photo I took just before sunset, of two crows flying rather majestically across the autumn sky.

It's finally stopped raining

I was greeted by this beautiful sky this morning when I opened the curtains, and just had to take a picture (can you count the crows?). After living in Manchester for seven years I tend not to complain about rainy weather so often (it's nicknamed "The Rainy City" for a reason). However, it's been raining almost non-stop since last Friday night, when huge thunderstorms and quite insane amounts of rain (think tropical deluge) hit Tokyo and followed me all the way to Kyoto, where it remained until around 5pm on Sunday. 

Constant rain doesn't make for a good city-break, but we tried our best to get around and see some sights in Kyoto over the weekend. I'll publish the photos throughout the week.

Fly along with me, I can’t quite make it alone

I was distracted from my work for a few minutes by a couple of pigeons on the railings outside my office. When I first heard the tweets, I was expecting a sparrow or something. I gently pried apart the blinds to reveal a pair of pigeons (probably) discussing the best way to exit the atrium. One of them was clearly a squab, and was mainly responsible for the bulk of the commotion. 

The image on the right is a 100% crop from the image on the left. Impressive stuff!

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You're doing it wrong

Mother (I know nothing of pigeon parental rights) was trying to nudge her offspring off the railing. That's what the fuss was about. The squabbling squab, clearly annoyed at mum, tried to call her bluff by pretending to fly into the balcony instead. After much heated debate, they were off.

I wonder if they made their way back home when he learned to fly? ♬