Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm — 1/250 sec, f/7.1, ISO 640 — full exif & map — nearby photos Old Truck Ready for the New Year Kakeroma-Jima Island, Amami Island Group, Japan For reasons I've yet to fully investigate, it's common around this time of year to see vehicles in Japan adorned with some kind of [...]
View full post »

Today's post is an essentially-random collection of pictures. Canon IXY DIGITAL 700 — 1/400 sec, f/7.1 — full exif & map — nearby photos 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 [...]
View full post »

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 30 mm — 1/90 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1000 — full exif & map — nearby photos Keihan as Served Local Amami-Ooshima Specialty Fumie's grandmother was born and raised on Amami Ooshima, an island far in the south of Japan, part of a long drawn-out chain of islands that delimits the boarder between the East China [...]
View full post »

Kine Imai 1924 - 2008 As we've been expecting any moment since her stroke at the beginning of the year, Fumie's grandmother (Fumie's mother's mother) passed away Friday afternoon. She was born Kine Ueda on Amami Ooshima (an island in southern Japan) in 1924. She was 84. The last time I talked with her was while looking at maps and satellite photos [...]
View full post »

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — 1/160 sec, f/5, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos My World is Spinning Out of Control and I love it! During last month's trip to Amami Ooshima (a southern-Japan island in the East China Sea), the big attraction for Anthony at our hotel was a swing. Out behind [...]
View full post »

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — 1/1250 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos Rock Climbing at the Beach Despite having a cold during our vacation last week to Amami (a southern Japanese island in the East China Sea), I somehow found the energy to take a few pictures. I'm busy [...]
View full post »

I was feeling just dandy last Saturday morning while we awaited the airport shuttle to pick us up to start a five-day mini vacation to a somewhat tropical island in southern Japan, so I was more than a little dismayed when after hauling the luggage down to the van and settling into my seat that I suddenly realized that [...]
View full post »

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/2, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos Hirozou Yasuda As I mentioned on my recent Overwhelmed: an Embarrassment of Riches post, I've been meaning to write about Hirozou Yasuda (安田ひろぞう, or just “Hirozou-san”), the guide we had for a day on Kakeromajima, one of the small southern-Japanese Amami [...]
View full post »

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 34 mm — 1/250 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — full exif & map — nearby photos Spooky Tree Finally getting around to writing one of the posts I mentioned in Overwhelmed: an Embarrassment of Riches, here's the “spooky tree” that our guide, Hirozou-san, showed us tucked away in a far corner of the [...]
View full post »

I feel absolutely overwhelmed with stuff I want to write about and share. I was hoping to finally get around to posting about some interesting things from last week's trip to Kanazawa. I'd already done one post with a few pics from Kenrokuen Gardens, but there's so much more, including the interesting “Modern Art (Japanese Style)” train station, and a [...]
View full post »

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 45 mm — 1/125 sec, f/2.8, ISO 320 — full exif & map — nearby photos Bamboo Floor Desktop-Background Versions Standard: 1024×768  ·  1440×1080  ·  1600×1200      Widescreen:  1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600 Bamboo floor of the outside walkway at the tea house of the Murin'an gardens, taken last summer when my friends KFC and Verena visited Kyoto. The next two are stones on the beach [...]
View full post »

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 50 mm — 1/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 640 — full exif & map — nearby photos Mangroves on Amami Ooshima On the last day of our New Year's trip to the Amami Islands in southern Japan (all Amami posts), we went for a canoe ride among the Mangroves that grow in one spot, on [...]
View full post »

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/80 sec, f/4, ISO 250 — full exif & map — nearby photos Old Wall Of Coral The roads of southern Japan's Amami Islands used to be lined with walls built from dead coral, but now only a few such remnants of the past remain. During our trip to Amami, we visited [...]
View full post »

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 26mm — 1/500 sec, f/8, ISO 250 — full exif & map — nearby photos North-Eastern Amami-Ooshima the area where Fumie's grandmother lived before WWII As I wrote before, it was often windy and rainy during our New-Year's trip to Amami, in southern Japan, but the weather was quite dynamic and squall might be immediately followed by [...]
View full post »

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 38mm — 1/60 sec, f/9, ISO 320 — full exif & map — nearby photos 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 [...]
View full post »

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/100 sec, f/7.1, ISO 640 — full exif & map — nearby photos 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, [...]
View full post »

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 44mm — 1/500 sec, f/4, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos 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 [...]
View full post »

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/100 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — full exif & map — nearby photos 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 East China Sea in the far south of [...]
View full post »

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/800 sec, f/6.3, ISO 250 — full exif & map — nearby photos 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 [...]
View full post »