The heavy December rains were falling as I made my way in to work on a soggy Tuesday morning.  I was bundled up for the weather as it is my only defense against the cold.  I looked as if the sun would never burst through the clouds, but I was wrong.

Soon after lunch the sun did finally struggle to make a brilliant appearance.  Off to the west the sun’s rays blasted though the clouds while the east was still gray with rain.  The two opposites quietly inhabited the same space.  This is when I found myself wandering through a peaceful temple’s garden gazing at the wondrous momiji (japanese maple).  The colors were reaching their fulfillment as they ripened to hues of burgundy.

The momiji’s colors contrates with the yellow ginko leaves that carpeted the ground.  I was able to steal a moment of stillness.  A moment of just myself enveloped in their hues.  The young children and their mothers no longer entered into my consciousness.  I was at one with the hues.  The hues were as silent as I hope my my soul could be.

The autumn colors have been super late arriving this year in and around where I live.  I has very happy to have found that the Japanese Maple trees around are finally displaying their explosive colors.  These five-pointed leaves are alive rich hues that bound from the deep wine burgundies to multicolored mix and matched colors of yellows and reds.  The hues awaken my senses and I am always amazed at how vibrant these colors can be.

I found these all at a little temple complex on top of a small hill in Ichikawa, Chiba, Japan.  There were all amazing hues that teased my Ricoh GR IV out of my pocket and into my hand.  I searched out those hues that pulled me like a magnet towards them.   I wasn’t the only one wandering around this small complex looking at the autumn leaves.  There were several groups of mainly older Japanese looking at the trees.

Just another reason to be thankful.  I am thankful to the Creator for splashing my cold gray day with the explosions of color from the Mimoji trees.

It has been a long wait this autumn season, but the beautiful yellow of the ginkgo trees has arrived.  So many trees were damaged in the typhoon that came through in October, that many trees just went to brown rather than change to their gorgeous autumn shades.

The tall gingko trees were shining in the late afternoon sun.  Their paper backlit as the sun started to dip down behind the building for the day.  I got out and walked around for a bit.  The trees were rather large as their upper branches reached up to the skies.

Yellow, yellow, yellow, has arrived at last.

As I was walking through a buddhist temple on my way back to the train, my eyes drifted to the roof of the temple.  My eyes kept on wandering over the roof until I encountered a sky so blue that I thought that I might be dreaming.  The sky was an amazing shade of blue.  Like those caribbean seas I swam in down in Jamaica.  The sky was painted this hue.  And across that sea of blue were rows of white clouds.  They had been pulled by the wind and stretched into long rows like that of planted garden.  It was an amazing to just be still and look up into the sky.

It was a surreal moment.  Was I really there?  Was it just a fragment of dream that surfaced in my waking hours?  Does it matter if it was?

I do not have the answers.  All I know is that there was truth in that shade of blue.  A truth that touched my soul.