(IMAGE: Our New Year's Card)
We just back from a five-day trip to Amami-Ooshima (an island in the south of Japan). While waiting for 858 photos I took to process, I thought I'd post our 2007 Christmas / 2008 New Year's card (nengajou – 年賀状). It features a photo we took with a tripod here in Kyoto, and the family picture that Anthony was commissioned to draw.
For reference, here is a link to last year's and the year before's, and a short introduction to Japanese New Year's Cards that I wrote a couple of years ago.
View full post »

I'm trying a new look for my blog.... OLD:
NEW:

It's a look that I hope is more suitable for the photo-heavy content I tend to produce, and lighter and simpler overall.
I've been working on it for the last month or so. Having not really grasped the essential nature of how to use CSS (style sheets) for a long time, my years of content developed a hodge-podge of style markups that changed over time as both my knowledge of CSS and my sense of aesthetics changed.
It was a monumental task to go over all the older posts to try to tidy them up [...]
View full post »

Alexander Kiel's has developed some insight into the “FormatMessageW failed” error that plagues some Windows users of Lightroom export plugins, including my export plugins for Zenfolio, SmugMug, Flickr, and Picasa Web. From his reports, the problem seems to be related to IE7 and slow internet connections.
He poses a potential solution, so those running into this error are encouraged to see his writeup on the subject.
View full post »

(IMAGE: This Pretty Much Sums it Up) (ninety seconds later, powerful wind and rain slammed into us)
We took a short trip over the New Year holiday to the Amami Islands of southern Japan, in the East China Sea about halfway between Okinawa and the Japanese mainland.
The map below shows our flight back, from the northern part of the main Amami island (circled in green) to Osaka (circled in blue). Mentally, Amami feels much further away than Hokkaido (circled in Red) where we visited last May, even though the latter is indeed farther away.

When we went to Hokkaido, we took an 18-hour [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Anthony Serving his First Mass)
Anthony served at Mass for the first time today, at a Mass said by Fr. Graham McDonnell, who says an English Mass once a month at the Catholic church we attend (the Kyoto Kawaramachi Cathedral, which is the same church that I got married in almost 10 years ago).
Anthony had been begging to do it for months, but it took until today until our schedule matched up with Fr. McDonnell's, so by the time we got there, he was quite excited.
(IMAGE: Excited About Finally Starting)
Jimazaki-san (one of the parish office workers) had to scrounge around for [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Stationmaster)
I mentioned yesterday that Anthony had received some train stuff for Christmas. From Santa, he received the Tomy PlayRail Twin Tower Train Station that he'd petitioned Santa for, and from Mommy and Daddy he received various sets of extra track, bridges, and the like. All this added to the little PlayRail Automatic Train Transfer Station that he picked out when he turned five in October.
He'd really been hoping for the twin-tower station, and when it came to opening the last present – the present from Santa – he saw what it was with the first tear of the wrapping. He immediately bolted up and moved [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Approaching Takeoff)
As I mentioned on my Amami Islands post, it was really really really windy for the first few days of our New-Year's visit to Amami Island (奄美大島) in the China Sea in the south of Japan. The airport is near the Kasari-cho area (the north-east part of the island) where Fumie's grandmother lived until a teenager, and in exploring that area after we arrived, we found ourselves at a deserted lighthouse at the most northern tip of the island.
(IMAGE: View from the End of the Road)
(IMAGE: Whipping Wind)
I don't suppose that the picture above really shows the whipping wind very [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Ninja)
(IMAGE: “I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you”)
(IMAGE: Ninja Monkey)
View full post »

(IMAGE: Semper Fidelis)
I've got a cold (yuck), so I'm dipping into my archive of “blog about someday” pics for some low-hanging easy-to-post fruit.
This lock was on the door of a bell tower deep in the mountains on the rear grounds of the Nanzen Temple (Kyoto, Japan). It took it last summer while walking around with friends KFC and Verena while they were in town. It was the same trip where Anthony inspected a butterfly.
View full post »

(IMAGE: It's Time To Make the Udon)
For dinner this evening, Fumie prepared udon – thick noodles – which reminded me of our trip last month to Takamatsu (Kagawa Prefecture, Japan). That area is known for both its udon production and consumption, with something like a bazillion times more udon shops per capita than Tokyo has McDonald's and Starbucks combined.
We got a recommendation from a local for a good shop, and were not disappointed, as we could watch the noodles being made from scratch.
The process starts out with the chef kneading wheat flour, salt, and water into a big ball, and letting it [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Freaky Orange-Pod Plant-Thing)
While on our trip to the Amami Islands in the south of Japan, we came across all sorts of odd plantlife. Well, odd to us, that is. This orange pod thing came in all shapes and sizes, and looked like some kind of aloe-like plant:
(IMAGE: Alien Aloe From Mars)
In looking it up now, I see that it's not an aloe-like plant, but that is aloe, just not the non-flowering Aloe vera I was used to seeing occasionally in pots while growing up.

This next grassy-type-puffy thing was a weed found pretty much everywhere...
(IMAGE: Puffy Fluffy Weed)
Beside the [...]
View full post »

Anthony overheard the word “culture” (bunka – 文化) during a conversation between me and Fumie, and asked what it meant. It's a difficult concept for a five year old, but I tried to explain a bit, then gave the example that one doesn't wear shoes at home in Japan, but they do in America.
He thought about it for a bit, and as it set in, he said in the most incredulous tone of voice: “they wear shoes inside the house?”
I said yes.
His reply to that was the single word “why?”, but if only I could possibly convey the tone of his voice [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Part of the Pre-Mass Instructions)
Anthony served at Mass again today, and it's still so incredibly adorable that I just have to post some more pictures from his first time serving last week.
(IMAGE: Can't Reach the Floor)
(IMAGE: Returning the Now-Extinguished Candle)
(IMAGE: Any Sermon is Long for a Five-Year Old)
But a few seconds later, after noticing me looking his way...
(IMAGE: Just a Bit More Ship-Shape)
View full post »

(IMAGE: Extremely Blue)
Those who have been in Roppongi (an area of Tokyo) recently will likely have seen this outdoor light installation, and will realize that all the white lights mixed in with the blue above are really blue lights that were so bright that they “blew out” all the color channels on my camera's digital sensor, leaving only white.
For those not having seen it in person, let's just say that it was a really, really blue area.
View full post »

The four export plugins for Adobe Lightroom that I've written – for uploading to Zenfolio, SmugMug, Flickr, and Picasa Web – are useful, I hope, and offer lots of options and ways for the user to configure how their images are processed. If I had more time and more skill, though, the plugins could do more. So much more.
For example, Tim Armes' LR/Mogrify Lightroom Export Plugin offers a lot of nice features that I wish my plugins offered, including: the ability to add watermark overlays (both text and images) the ability to add borders around images the ability to apply output sharpening [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Mochi, Kinako, and Bamboo Skewers)
Dipping into my photo archives back to last February, I've been wanting to write about our visit to Ichiwa in north-western Kyoto, a thousand-year-old family-run purveyor of aburi-mochi (あぶり餅 – “lightly grilled mochi”): grilled kinako mochi on skewers.
Mochi is basically cooked sweet rice that's been pulverized into a sticky, gooey paste. Kinako is flour made from roasted soybeans.
(IMAGE: Unassuming Shop)
The family started business in the second year of the reign of the emperor Chouhou (長保２年), which would place it square on Year 1000 of the western calendar. 1,008 years and 24 generations of history later, it's currently run by [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Tree Snuggies)
Today we had a few flakes of snow, which is all the main part of Kyoto normally gets. The outlying areas, especially up in the mountains, can get heavy amounts – one of Anthony's school friends couldn't make it to school today because of the snow in the mountains. A couple of years ago, we did get several inches of accumulation, which made the Heian Shrine quite pretty.
One sure sign of winter in Japan are the snuggies that you see appear on trees in the late fall. These komomaki straw mats – wrapped around the trunks of pines and cedars – are [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: “Bathroom Closed In Spring”) (and fall and winter)
As I mentioned yesterday, Kyoto city proper doesn't normally get much snow, but today we had occasion to be in the mountains a bit and Anthony got a few moments to play in some snow that hadn't melted yet.
That's not what these pictures are from.

I thought to use the occasion to post some pictures from last Spring – April 30th – when we found more than a bit of snow on top of a mountain in Kitafurano (Hokkaido, in northern Japan), where the snow doesn't melt away until July.
(IMAGE: Following a [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Light Breakfast at “Horizon Club”)
Our New-Year's trip to the Amami Islands in southern Japan consisted of two nights on the main Amami-Ooshima island, followed by two nights on the much smaller, much more sparsely-populated next island south, Kakeroma-jima (カケロマ島, the island outlined in blue on the second map of my initial post). The land area covers the size of a large city, but it has a population of only about 1,000.
We stayed at Horizon Club, a “pension” (bed and breakfast) near the eastern ferry port. (Horizon Club – ホライゾンクラブ: web site · blog)
(IMAGE: View From The Road)
The location consists of [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Anything Else from the Kitchen, Ma'am?)
Sigh, my MacBook died today, which means that I have to edit stuff with my PC. I like using the PC and its big screen for photo work, but Windows is excruciating for anything else, like writing a blog post. Being forced to use Windows for something like this feels as satisfying as eating a fresh carrot without teeth, so I'll be sticking with simple posts until I get it fixed...
Anthony had a friend, Monet, over to play for a short time yesterday. (Monet was featured last year in this post.) They did “cooking [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Surplus) Parts left over after performing surgery on my old laptop computer
As I mentioned yesterday, my 18-month-old MacBook died yesterday. I think the disk controller went bad, taking out the hard drive as well (the big disk that I'd installed myself early on). Apple's products are wonderful when they work, but their laptops have a history of “longevity issues.” I guess that's what happens when you push the envelope as far as they do. I wholeheartedly recommend their laptops, but be sure to build into the cost the extra few hundred dollars for the extended warranty, as I did when I bought mine.
Apple is [...]
View full post »

I've just posted new versions of my Lightroom export plugins ( Zenfolio  ·  SmugMug  ·  Flickr  ·  Picasa Web ) that include a new “Run Any Command” piglet. This piglet – for technically-savvy users – allows you to run any command on each exported image before it's uploaded:

The piglet comes with my plugins, but it can also be used with any plugin that uses my piglet plugin-addon infrastructure.
Details on the piglet, along with an example of it applying exiftool to each image, is on the Run-Any-Command Piglet's page.
A few warnings about today's plugin updates: There were a number of behind-the-scenes infrastructure changes in these updates, so there may be some [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Start of Play) Me (black shirt) covering Dave (tan shirt),     Dennis (red shirt) covering Rich (white shirt) Photo by Zhihui Huey Hu
Visiting my photo archives, I came across a bunch of shots from when I last played Ultimate Frisbee with a few friends at Yahoo!, in Sunnyvale California, about a year and a half ago. At the time, I posted a sequence of shots I took of a well-executed goal. Here are a few shots that others took with my camera while I played.
I like the perspective in these first two shots, and the colors; it was late – past 7:30pm – [...]
View full post »

Wow, despite the 37% plunge seen in Apple's stock so far this month, they're still on the ball in one respect: my MacBook, picked up for repair on Tuesday afternoon, was returned this afternoon, a scant 47 hours later.
Sweet.
View full post »

(IMAGE: Monet and her Mommy)
There was an event at Anthony's preschool today, and although I have a bazillion pictures I want to share, I don't have the energy to write a long post tonight. So, instead, I'll put this picture of Monet and her mommy that I took during the event. I think it's really sweet. You can see where Monet gets her photogenicity.
You might remember Monet from the cooking play post from the other day, and from this camera-geeks post from last fall. (Actually she was also on this fall-colors post as well.)
View full post »

(IMAGE: Bento Boxes Awaiting Mochi)
As I mentioned yesterday, there was an event at Anthony's preschool yesterday: a “mochi-tsuki” event, where the kids make mochi, the gooey rice product that I described a week ago.
Mochi is made by cooking a special kind of sweet rice, and pounding it over and over in a big stone bowl with a huge wooden mallet, both of which can be seen in the photo below:
(IMAGE: Pre-Mochi-Making “Hide From The Camera” Event)
The operation was overseen by a kindly man who enjoyed being with the kids.
(IMAGE: Head Mochi-Maker)
While each kid got a chance to pound the [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Thank You Santa)
I feel slightly less pathetic today because we finally got our Christmas tree put away. Also helping is that last week I finally got around to sending the “thank you” notes Anthony wrote for his presents.
In preparing for Anthony to write them, I wrote “Thank you / Love, Anthony” on a separate piece of paper, then suggested that after copying it, he fill the rest of the paper with whatever he wanted in order to express his thanks for the gifts, or his love, or whatever he wanted. When I returned, these are the notes he had written.
In the [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Really Really Blue Hills in Roppongi)
This is the bird's-eye view of the scene shown in the Extremely Blue Light Display post from two weeks ago. The light display is on a hillside in Roppongi Hills (an area of Tokyo, Japan); the photo was taken from a pedestrian walkway that goes over a road fronting the display.
The two side sections were static, while the display in the center section flashed and undulated from time to time.
Fumie and I were in Tokyo two weeks ago for another concert by Kousuke Atari, having won in a drawing one of the 150 pairs of [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Dizzying Heights)
While heading to the airport at the end of our trip to Amami (more Amami posts), I noticed this amazing “bridge ramp thingy” (I'm not really sure what to call it) while driving through the city of Naze, off in a direction we weren't heading.
This detailed map (courtesy of Google) shows that it makes two complete revolutions:
(IMAGE: Google Maps View) camera position marked with green arrow in the lower left
I've never quite seen anything like it. It's definitely on my list to check out next time we go to Amami.
View full post »

(IMAGE: Type 700 Bullet Train Prepares to Leave Kyoto)
Japan's Bullet Trains – shinkansen – are justifiably world famous for their speed and amazing punctuality. I've had occasion to ride them several times in the last month or so, once to visit a friend, and twice for concerts, so I thought I'd share a few images, mostly of the (rather unremarkable) view inside.
(IMAGE: View from Car #14, Seat 5A)
The model of train shown in these pictures a “Type 700”, which is the most recent model, but old enough that Anthony already has a toy version (the solid yellow one seen in the Playrail [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Pretty Flowers)
It's been a while since I've posted something pretty just for the sake of posting something pretty. I used the photo above to illustrate the Book on Photography that Doesn't Suck in my Good Photographers, Bad Writers post last year.




I came across these flowers outside someone's home, on the way back from the Kyoto Keage Water-Treatment Plant last May, after I'd just about been blinded by the brilliant beauty of a bazillion azaleas.
View full post »