Autumn leaves on a quiet pathway in Tokyo's Shinjuku Gyoen garden. The focus/out-of-focus effect was accomplished with a special lens on the camera, not by altering the image digitally.
Afficiondos of sushi will be familiar with that green horse-radish-like paste called "wasabi" that always accompanies raw fish. Wasabi is the root of a plant that requires lots of clear, cold water to grow. Up here in the mountains of the Izu Penninsula, they still grow a lot of wasabi. This is a photo of an abandoned "wasabi-dana", or wasabi field. The carefully-constructed terraces that used to channel the water to the growing plants have fallen into disrepair, letting the waterfalls form where they will.
A waterfall pours mountain water into the ocean on the Eastern coast of Japan's Izu Penninsula.
