Outside Takayama

Evening Forest (Takayama) - Japan  2016

Abandoned Building (Takayama) - Japan  2016

Scenes found while walking around our ryokan outside Takayama. The area was just a little bit dilapidated and overgrown, but not without its charm.

Wandering through the evening forest Mike came upon a hidden pond, a single koi slowly swimming back and forth. He found the enveloping darkness to be just a little bit . . . , hm, eerie. One thinks of the Japanese aesthetic term, yūgen:

Yūgen (幽玄) is an important concept in traditional Japanese aesthetics. The exact translation of the word depends on the context. In the Chinese philosophical texts the term was taken from, yūgen meant "dim", "deep" or "mysterious".

Evening Pond, Koi (Takayama) - Japan  2016