Today's post is an essentially-random collection of pictures.
(IMAGE: Spectating at 150mph)
A view of Mt. Fuji, taken with my point-n-shoot from the window of a shinkansen (bullet train) traveling at about 250kph. This was from a trip about a year ago to Tokyo to see Kousuke Atari in concert.
A point of trivia: I believe the river you can see in the background is an electrical dividing line: household current to the east of the river (Tokyo, Nagano, Sapporo...) is 50Hz, while that to the west (Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya, Hiroshima, Amami....) is 60Hz. The difference matters less with modern equipment, but old clocks and things with [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Paying Attention) to the wrong thing
Anthony is still doing “Jumping”, the preschool gymnastics that I described two years ago. I brought my camera again today for the first time since then...
(IMAGE: Returning to the Fold) after having forgotten something outside
(IMAGE: Opening Chat)
(IMAGE: Stretching)
(IMAGE: Unfun Stretching) ( as if there's any other kind... )
Some of the kids are ridiculously flexible. Check out the girl in the upper-right corner above...
(IMAGE: More Unfun)
One of the things they did was a hoop chase. The instructor stands in the corner of the room (upper-right, in the doorway in the pic [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Equal Parts Fun and Terror)
(IMAGE: At The Brink of Greatness)

In my previous post, about fun on our trip to Blumeの丘, I recounted how fun the go-carts were, but that the real fun had only begun. The real fun was a short hill covered with some slippery surface down which you could toboggan.
Toboggans could be rented at $3 for 20 minutes. We rented two for an hour, and had great fun.
(IMAGE: First Trip)

(IMAGE: Race with Daddy)
(IMAGE: Returning for Another Run)
Each trip down the short hill took about 10 seconds.
(IMAGE: Rocketing)
(IMAGE: [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Oh My!   Ouch!!) Reacting to a magician's “knife through the neck” trick.
The outing that I mentioned yesterday (that produced the car at sunset advertisement-esque shot) was an hour's drive away, to the German-themed Blumeの丘, a name with German and Japan components that translates in English to “flower hill”. It's a park full of flowers, farms, restaurants, shops, and entertainment, that was pleasant, although as far as I could tell, the German theme extended only so far as the font used for signs, and the music played throughout the mini town mall.
We didn't really know what to expect, and were pleasantly surprised to find [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Overcast Day on the Grounds of the Imperial Palace) Kyoto, Japan  ·  Dec, 2007
( finally, a touch of sun )
Kyoto's fall foliage season starts very late compared to the rest of the world. Last year's first fall-colors post wasn't until November 3rd, while 2006's was even later (and less colorful). In browsing my blog's full list of posts, or my fall-colors category, you'll find that late November / early December are when Kyoto's fall colors reach their peak.
Two things tell me fall is coming (besides the calendar). One is that it has started to cool a bit. This morning, the temperature dipped [...]
View full post »

— 1/320 sec, f/6.3, ISO 6400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
My lingering cold finally unlingered enough today that I could venture out for a bit: Anthony for a bike ride, and me to give my new Nikon D700 a spin. Other than the 20-minute night-time outing that resulted in the Impossible Photography post and its followup, I hadn't been outside with the D700 since the day I got it (the day I returned to Kyoto from summer travels).
I grabbed my biggest zoom (Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 VR and a 1.7× Extender), and put the camera into “Auto ISO” mode such that it'll [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Cute)
Visiting Anthony's kindergarten for their
View full post »

(IMAGE: Textured)
A shot from my recent Impossible Photography outing, where I used a very fast lens (Nikkor 50mm f/1.2) and the Nikon D700's low-light performance for some night photography in Kyoto.
This was the entrance foyer of a restaurant that had plenty of light.... I only needed ISO 1100 at f/1.2 and 1/100sec for the wider shot....

It reminds me a bit of the front desk at the Four Seasons Resort, Whistler, although this was perhaps more out of place.
The low-light performance still doesn't help with the problem of dynamic range.... of being able to capture/display the detail in dark shadows [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Movie Shoot) outside my livingroom window
Someone was shooting some movie scenes outside our window for hours today. That's the biggest hubbub our sleepy little town of Kyoto has seen since a Presidential visit in 2005, and part of the G8 Summit earlier in the summer, so I snapped a few shots, all from my livingroom window.
(IMAGE: The Talent)
(IMAGE: Big Production) ( Okay, not so big. Perhaps a dozen people in total )
They were there for a long time... at least the six hours that I noticed them. They spent the most time on the shot on the bridge, coming back to [...]
View full post »

, ISO 4000 — full exif & map — nearby photos (IMAGE: Inviting) dark path to someone's home, made bright by Nikon
I haven't done much since returning to Japan a week ago. Tired from the trip... overwhelmed with work (that I don't even get paid for)... and spending an inordinate time at the doctor for some acute back problems. It's been a long week.
But I was feeling okay last night, so after Mass in downtown Kyoto, I thought I'd give my new Nikon D700's legendary low-light performance a spin, combining it with the fastest lens that I could get my hands on (that is, one that lets [...]
View full post »

As I wrote in my story about my visit to a Japanese High School, part of the visit was a group discussion with students about a wide variety of issues, including what they want to become later in life. The girls that hoped to raise a family said so somewhat sheepishly, as if being a mother wasn't “real” work.
I corrected them, pointing out that motherhood is an unsung, unappreciated, demanding job that society gives little credit for, but should. After Anthony was born, I called my mom and said “thanks, and sorry”, because you really don't get it until you have kids of your own.
Nevertheless, [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Water Play) in the river near the Yase Hiezanguchi station of the Eizan Railway in north-east Kyoto.
Last week, Nils invited us to play at the river near the end of the train line that runs by his house, so Anthony and I scootered up there. It would be the first time for us to see Greg in ages...
Four and a half year old (IMAGE: Greg Ferry)
Sorry about the focus on the shot of Greg, but four-year-old boys pretend to not understand “hold still so I can focus.” The shot reminds me of this hunky picture of Anthony when he was three and a [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Lazy Dayz in Kyoto)
It was fairly warm in Kyoto today – 36°C (98°F) in the shade – but the humidity was uncharacteristically low, so it was fairly pleasant if you were in the shade. At least, I think so... I never left the air-conditioning of the house!

I did notice from the living-room window a guy fishing in the little river. He was there for hours.

I also noticed the cherry tomatoes that Anthony and Mommy planted in a pot on the veranda were moving along...
(IMAGE: Little Farmer Anthony's First Crop)
Someone found a cool way to [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Hello) Seen parked at a local convenience store, in Kyoto, Japan


I'm sort of left speechless, so no further comment, except to note that the side-view mirrors seem woefully underaccessorized, relatively speaking.
View full post »

(IMAGE: Yoko-chan Preparing to Sing)
It's been a busy few days, photographically speaking. The other day Anthony went swimming in the river with Greg. This evening I had one photo-op event with noh musician Riko-chan's daddy, and another with Yoko-chan, whose daddy arranged for my recent visit to a Japanese high school. On the way home, I spotted the most amazing (not in a good way) car in the parking lot of a convenience store, and had to whip out the camera then as well. Much photo-processing awaits.
This post is about Yoko-chan, one of Anthony's kindergarten friends. She performed today at the Kyoto Brighton Hotel's “Relay Music [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Japanese “The Way of the Bump” Road Repair) ugly, careless patch in the middle of a newly-paved road
You know the old saying “If you want it to rain, wash the car”..., well, something along the same lines in Japan might be “If you want someone to hack up your street and leave it a bumpy, jumbled mess of uneven bone-jarring patches, pave it.”
A stretch of Teramachi St. near Anthony's kindergarten was, for years, one of the worst streets in Kyoto. It was paved recently, but before that – I really should have taken a picture – there wasn't an inch of the stretch [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: “Yes, It's 6AM, Do You Have a Problem With That?”) ( okay, he didn't really say that, but that's sort of how I felt that early in the morning )
Wrapping up with a few final pics from my five-day camping trip with Anthony two months ago, the shot above is from the Ocean At 6:05 AM point of the morning walk on our first full day.
(IMAGE: Jumping The “Hot River”)
(IMAGE: Calling for Daddy) The almost-three-year-old little brother of Anthony's new friends
(IMAGE: Sunset From the Beach) ( I like pretty sunsets; this one eventually gave way to some amazing afterglow [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: $9 Cup of Coffee) Les comptoirs de La Tour D'Argent Tokyo, Japan
Fumie and I made a day trip up to Tokyo yesterday for a birthday party for singer Kousuke Atari (中孝介), whom we've seen in concert many times. It was attended by 85 of his closest friends fans.
We ran into a lady we met at his Roppongi Hills, Tokyo concert in January, whom Fumie had really clicked with, so after yesterday's event, we all stopped by a nearby cafe so that they could chat.
The cafe had a nice – although somewhat pretentious – atmosphere. One of the workers was a “non-Japanese looking” guy who [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Roof In Need of a Trim) At the Itsukushima Shrine, Miyajima, Japan
I've mentioned recently how much I love the natural roofs of many temples and shrines, having noted it in recent posts about the Fushimi Inari Shrine and about the Kiyomizu Temple. The roof above, like the roofs cited in those posts, are made of many layers of thin sheets of what I assume is wood. Such a roof, over time, slowly breaks down and returns to nature.
Here's a relatively new one, as evidenced by the sharp shadows showing that the individual sheets of wood are still easily distinguishable as, well, individual sheets of [...]
View full post »

(IMAGE: Application Photos) Photos attached to our application for Anthony to attend an elementary school next year
You need a lot of ID-type photos in Japan. Applications for lots of things require them, such as an application for a driver's license (even though the picture you submit is not used for the license itself), application for a foreigner registration card, and applications to attend a school, to name a few.
Taken even further by the school we were applying to, we had to submit photos of ourselves as well. I have no idea why, and I'm fairly certain it would be considered odd (if not [...]
View full post »