I decided to take a look at the progress of the landslide repair just past Kutsuki village (Takashima City) that seems to be under construction since at least last July. Kutsuki is in the mountains between Lake Biwa and Kyoto City. In fact, three cities and two prefectures meet up in one part at the edge of Kutsuki: Takashima City, Kyoto City and Otsu City. I think the landslide is just across the boundary in Otsu City.  There are few ways to get to Kyoto from Kutsuki but there are also other roads that meander, growing mossier and mossier until they suddenly end as tiny one lane roads marked with crumbled cliff-faces and warning signs. It was one of these roads that I drove on on a rainy autumn day. 

It was also on this day that I decided to change the name of the series I was working on from "The Disappearing Views of Takashima-City" to something else. I began to see the geography marking how the towns, villages and countryside has been arbitrarily clumped into cities to fight the constant population drain in rural areas. Over one bridge is Kyoto city, in Kyoto prefecture and my side I was in Otsu city, Shiga prefecture. This was all just a little ways from Takashima city which was seven separate towns and hamlets just a few years ago. These places I've been visiting since last year are not as separate as the taxation and utility departments define them. I realized that I don't want to define the places I'm photographing by the same set of rules as some city-hall wants to.

The other part of the name "Disappearing Views of Takashima-City" I don't like is that these views aren't going to disappear as much as change. But that's nothing new or spectacular. What is really happening is that the younger generation is moving to the city to find more profitable work and live in greater convenience creating a vacuum in the rural areas. So in the end I need to start photographing the journey between the quiet towns and villages between Lake Biwa and Kyoto city. Now I just need to come up with a new name. "City Self, Country Self" is already taken by Rodney Graham.