(IMAGE: Kevin and Yoko Parrington) June 1, 2008 Yokohama, Japan
I attended the wedding of an old friend yesterday; Kevin and Yoko tied the knot on the 68th floor of Yokohama's Landmark Tower, the tallest building in Japan. They appeared on my Impromptu Portraits in the Park post last year not long after they got engaged, as well as in followups here, here, and here.

Kevin is one of those guys who looks better and better with age, but really, you almost didn't notice him or anything else when Yoko was present. "Spectacular" just doesn't do her or that dress justice.

(IMAGE: The Bride) Yoko Parrington

(IMAGE: Agent Double-Oh-Kevin)
More pictures from Kevin and Yoko Parrington's wedding.
Kevin is the youngest of 10 kids, and – according to the “life history” that he wrote about himself for the reception guests – the cutest of them all. Not all his family could make it to Japan for the wedding, so I thought I'd publish a few more pics right away, for their benefit...

Their time was divided pretty evenly between posing for photos and other stuff (where “other stuff” encompasses random little things like actually getting married, visiting with guests, cutting the cake, etc.). There was a lot of posing.

I [...]
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perspective corrected
We're finally getting our money's worth out of this kid.

Trying to get him to put away a toy he's just finished playing with is like pulling teeth, but for some reason, he enjoys cleaning the veranda. I dunno. It may have something to do with being able to freely splash water around....
(IMAGE: Put Some Muscle Into It, Kid!)
(IMAGE: Attention to Detail)
I don't know where this is going, but we're sure going to milk it for all it's worth....
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(IMAGE: Little Boys Run) It's just something they do
Continuing with my series about my five-day camping trip with Anthony, I pick up the story after the rain and wind (and eventual hotel) of Day 5...
Day 6 was glorious, both in terms of weather and mood (a warm futon and a hot bath have a way of helping the latter). After a lazy morning, we caravaned back toward Kyoto, stopping after about an hour at Amanohashidate (天橋立), a thin, 3.3km long natural land bridge pinching off several square miles of a bay in northern Kyoto Prefecture, off the Sea of Japan. It reminds me [...]
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(IMAGE: What am I?)
Here's a hint: a correct answer names something practical, not ornamental.
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(IMAGE: Buddhist Priest Prays) for Fumie's Grandmother
Fumie's Grandmother, Kine Imai, passed away at the end of April. This past weekend was the second part of the funeral, the kotsuiri – 骨入 – the “placing of the bones”.
A month or so ago, as part of the main funeral, the body was cremated such that there were still some rather large chunks of bone remaining. A typical Japanese (Buddhist) funeral includes a ceremony where family members use chopsticks to pluck certain bone fragments with symbolic meaning from the ashes, placing them into a small pot (as shown here), and we all did this, including five-year-old Anthony. It's [...]
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(IMAGE: Inspecting the Map) while hiking around the “Eastern Mountains” area of Kyoto, Japan
Well, I fall further behind. I had been planning to post the answer to the What am I? quiz from the other day (none of the guesses so far are even close), but Fumie has been quite sick, so I wanted to get Anthony out of the house so that she could rest. I'd been wanting to try some nearby hiking trails, and I ended up with enough photos to fill at least five different blog posts.
We started out after lunch with the grueling seven-minute drive up to Shogunzuka. (We hit a [...]
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Fumie is still miserably sick, so after school, I took Anthony over to play with three-year-old Gen (Zak's son, who has appeared on my blog plaing with Anthony here and here).
We went exploring in western Otsu where the city meets the mountain, with plenty to see and photograph, although I didn't quite get as many photos as yesterday. We got back late (after a delicious Zak-cooked meal... thanks!) and I haven't even looked through all the pics yet, but I wanted to post a few before heading to bed....
(IMAGE: Big Bowl of Fun)
(IMAGE: Sun Hitting the Water) as Gen crosses the small stone bridge ( [...]
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(IMAGE: Kanazawa Station) the quintessential shot that everyone gets ( but it requires good timing, because you have to stand in the middle of a large intersection to do so )
Last March, Fumie and I traveled to the city of Kanazawa to see Kousuke Atari in concert, and while photography is not allowed during the concert, Japan always offers plenty to enjoy in that respect. I've already posted about Kanazawa's Kenrokuen Gardens, and some hotel-lobby wedding-party shots I took.
Today, I'll post about the geometrically-rich entrance atrium of Kanazawa's JR (Japan Railway) station, one scene from which was the lead photo of my embarrassment [...]
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(IMAGE: Atrium Wall Supports) ( ultra-industrial version highly processed in Adobe Lightroom )
I posted earlier today about Kanazawa Station (Kanazawa, Japan) and how it does a wonderful job of mixing traditional Japanese with modern lines.
As I mentioned, the entire space is visually, geometrically rich, so I definitely had fun trying to capture interesting angles. The abstract results were sometimes enhanced (I perhaps fool myself by thinking) with some creative post-processing in Adobe Lightroom, to add a bit of an edge.
(IMAGE: Gate Underbelly)
(IMAGE: 11:15AM)
(IMAGE: Atrium in B & W) ( highly processed in Adobe Lightroom )
(IMAGE: Looking Straight Up) ( highly processed in [...]
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I wrote the other day about some hiking in the hills of eastern Kyoto, finishing up that story noting that a trail we took came out at the back of a “sorta' famous spot”, which if you looked at any of the map links, you realized was the Kiyomizu Temple.
This internationally-known cultural attraction is less than 1.2 miles from my house, but I've only been to it a few times, most recently just to photograph the front during one of Kyoto's evening light-up events (with the first photo on that post being the entrance area of Kiyomizu Temple). I also visited a year ago with my [...]
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(IMAGE: Colorful Sensu (Folding Fans)) Ten bucks each
20 bucks each
25 bucks each
75 bucks each ( I don't see the attraction )
(IMAGE: Bamboo Veins, Bamboo Holder) Fabric Face
(IMAGE: These Were Probably Pretty Pricy) although I neglected to notice how much

I snapped these photos outside a shop near the entrance to the Kiyomizu Temple (the subject of yesterday's post) on one of the evenings I was out for the Kyoto Higashiyama “Hanatoro” Lightup Event in March. I had my tripod with me, and the crowds had thinned, so I set up outside the shop (and outside the path of customers) and started snapping.

High-dynamic-range – HDR – is an image-processing technique that's been gaining popularity over the last few years. HDR can be used to create some amazing, impactful, stunning images. For some eye-popping examples, see this page, which is just one page of many that are linked from this HDR roundup.
I haven't created anything amazing with HDR, but I utilized HDR in whipping this image together, just for this post...
(IMAGE: HDR Example) boring, but illustrative
HDR attempts to overcome a limitation of current camera technology... a limitation that disallows a camera from picking up fine detail in the dark shadows and bright highlights of a scene at the [...]
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(IMAGE: Layer After Layer after Layer) of mini sub-shrines at Kyoto's Fushimi Inari Shrine
In my running set of posts about my visit to the Fushimi Inari Shrine in south-east Kyoto, I showed the paths lined with thousands of gates that the shrine is famous for, but I ended the most recent installment – Fushimi Inari Shrine: Foxes, Treasure, and More with the teaser that there was so much more than just the gates.
We didn't have a map, so we took what turned out to be a side path that later looped back to the main path....
(IMAGE: Anthony on a Side Path) with his two “walking” [...]
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(IMAGE: This Is Not Art) It's photography
The caption is just a silly reference to the “art” vs. “photography” discussion in my recent post about HDR. When I first looked this picture, I wondered why it was a blurry – it seemed mosaiced or pixelated, as if it hadn't been fully loaded from disk before display – and I waited for it to finish loading and to “snap” into focus. I eventually realized that it wasn't pixelated, but rather, it just had a lot of water drops that you (or, at least, I) don't notice at first.
It's a lotus flower. [UPDATE: Peter Barnes of Barnes Botany left [...]
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(IMAGE: Gardens at the “Water Forest”) Kusatsu, Japan (half an hour from Kyoto)
Yesterday's picture of a Lotus flower was taken during a dark, rainy day at the City of Kusatsu's (“Water Forest”) park. The name in Japanese is mizu no mori (水の森). They have outside gardens with all kinds of water plants, a large greenhouse (“Lotus Hall”), a movie theater, and restaurant. It costs $3 for adults.
It was raining while we where there, which is perhaps appropriate for a “water forest”.

(IMAGE: kishin · 喜心) Even my 2,500-page Japanese-Japanese dictionary didn't have this
(IMAGE: Where dinner plates come from?)
(IMAGE: Another Bridge in the Gardens) this [...]
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(IMAGE: Final Moments of a Dandelion)
While on a bike ride the other day, we stopped to watch a bit of hubbub as 15+ people doing a photo shoot for a catalog spent the better part of half an hour for just one shot.
(IMAGE: Watching the Hubbub)
Of course, Anthony doesn't care that they had a Nikon D3 or how they did the lighting, etc., so he was soon off to investigate more important things...
(IMAGE: Fist Full of Dandelions) and searching for more
(IMAGE: Spared) for the moment ( my focus is way off on this one... very disappointing )


He eventually [...]
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Putting five-year-old Anthony down for the night, we were lying in bed and chatting, and out of the blue he says... “ When I get big, if you're not dead, I'll become a spaceship person and go up to the stars and check how much big they are, how much round, how much heavy.... ”
I sort of chuckled at the “if you're not dead” part, but didn't comment. Since his great-grandmother died recently, and the ensuing funeral and such, we've had some matter-of-fact talks about death, and he seems to understand things well, and be at peace with the circle of life and his place in it.
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(IMAGE: Bummer)
A neighborhood restaurant featured in an earlier blog post suffered a fire yesterday when the cook took the wrong approach in cleaning the vent ducting above the stove. (Note to other cooks: using fire to burn away accumulated grime in vertical ducting works very well only if you consider the rest of the building to be “accumulated grime”.)
The fire explains why helicopters were hovering directly over our place for a while yesterday. (Hovering helicopters are apparently not good news in Japan. The last time helicopters were buzzing around, two weeks ago, it was due to a keeper at the nearby Kyoto Zoo having [...]
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(IMAGE: Watching Takeoff Preparations) ( preparations to take off, unfortunately, without us )
(IMAGE: Practicing) for the expected loudness
The other day when Anthony and I did some local hiking that ended up at the back entrance to the Kiyomizu Temple, we got to watch a helicopter take off from the helipad at Shogunzuka, the top of one of Kyoto's “Eastern Mountains”.
Besides a helipad and hiking trails, Shogunzuka offers some nice views of Kyoto, but unless you're at the overlook, it feels like you're in the middle of nowhere...
(IMAGE: Surrounded by Mountains)
(IMAGE: Getting Impatient)
This helipad is just a few minutes' drive from the [...]
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I spotted this snail on a small tiled “roof” on top of a short wall outside Giouji Temple in western Kyoto. He seemed quite photogenic, as did the wall. Gioujo temple has all kinds of pretty walls of various different constructions, although this external wall (seen in the left of this picture) is likely the least interesting.
(IMAGE: Snail, Old Nail, and Roof Tiles)
Most of the old nails put in to secure the tiles were sticking out like this one. Perhaps the wood underneath got wet, expanded, and squeezed the nail out? It seemed quite odd to me.
(IMAGE: Awaiting The Whole “...Gets Hammered Down” [...]
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(IMAGE: Tenacity) Bamboo shooting up through solid asphalt
The parking lot I use near Anthony's kindergarten used to be part of a temple garden that, apparently, contained some bamboo. We've noticed of late some bamboo shooting up through the asphalt, growing at an astonishing rate. (Well, at least, astonishing if you're not already familiar with how fast bamboo grows.)
The parking lot owner (who also owns the temple) doesn't care for it, so he hacked it off once when it popped up last year. You can see its remains to the left of the growing shoot above. I've been watching this one for the last couple of [...]
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(IMAGE: “Kyoto Tower is That Way”)
Okay, that's not really what the guy pointing was saying... or maybe it was, I dunno, I was 100 feet away.
Kyoto Tower, is, of course, the big bright spire left of center. Although it's not that pretty, it's tall and easy to see, so it's made cameo appearances in my blog several times, including from close up, from the same spot as today's pictures (Shogunuzkua), from far away, and from very far away.
I had a few spare minutes this evening, so I drove up to Shogunzuka (where Anthony and I watched a helicopter take off the other day). I half worried [...]
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(IMAGE: The Face of Freedom) working for pleasure, not just a paycheck
We decided to have a relaxing day, and took drive north an hour and a half to a middle-of-nowhere cafe that Fumie had read about on someone else's blog. It turns out that it's run by a guy who used to be some kinds of architectural-plastics engineer in Osaka, and left it all behind to follow his passion for, oddly enough, stone kilns. That translated into a cafe with fresh pizza on the menu.
The place is called kamo no shirabe (かものしらべ), which means either “melody of the ducks”, or “sounds of the river”, [...]
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The photo below, of pizza at a cafe, appeared on my previous post. It was taken with a polarizing filter on the lens adjusted to block glare from the window in the background. Mouseover the “Without Polarizer” button below for the same scene two seconds later, without the filter...

With Polarizer  ·  Without Polarizer mouseover button to see that [...]
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