As time has inched ever forward, the engines of progress and industrialization have altered the face of Japan forever. Traditions and customs that were uniquely endearing have been inexorably replaced with email-enabled DoCoMo and GPS-guided Toyota sedans.

To travel across the breadth of Japan today means witnessing a dwindling sense of permanence cling stubbornly to life. The land and ecosystem this history still supports has come to be dominated by JR trains and the beehive cities of Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Hiroshima, and Kobe, to name just a few of the places being overrun. Where can a person still go to see an environment that fostered arts and culture admired around the world...?

In Kyoto, of course...

One of the last remaining vestiges of ancient Japan lingers, waiting in the cool mist of an April rainstorm. If you look closely, you begin to wonder if these photos are merely the shaped creations of the camera's lense, or something mystically precious and transcendent - renderings of natural art - captured in a moment of time...