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 display incorporating twine, an evergreen twig, white strips of paper, and sometimes a tangerine. Just based on what else I know of Japan, I'm sure it's related to Shinto, because the white strips of paper are usually the zigzag streamers used in Shinto rituals. It's probably mostly just a non-religious custom now, having evolved from a religious purification ritual of some sort. That's my guess.

Anyway, the picture above is of an old truck on Kakeroma-jima Island that I took on our trip to Amami a year ago. The plastic bag used to protect the sprigs/tangerine completely destroys the visual aesthetic, so I'm guessing this one is actually more ritual and less custom.

A few more sort of random shots from my collection...

taken with an old cellphone — full exif & map — nearby photos
Storefront
selling Lord knows what
Kyoto, Japan

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/60 sec, f/4, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Geisha Stickers
on a post in a restaurant in Kibune

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 145 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/7.1, ISO 320 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Boys Will Be Boys
the world around

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 23 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/7.1, ISO 250 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Very Thin Building
Kyoto, Japan

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/180 sec, f/3.5, ISO 320 — full exif & map — nearby photos
BOSS is the Boss of Them All
Vending machine on Amami Island, Japan

“BOSS” is a brand of Suntory ice coffee (for which Tommy Lee Jones is a pitchman). The yellow sticker in the corner of the vending machine says “Value! 100 Yen. Only in Kyushu” (Kyushu being the region of Japan that Amami is part of).

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Enjoying the Great Outdoors
sketching on the grounds of the Old Imperial Palace
Kyoto, Japan

Nothing too exciting today, sorry. I've been tired and uninspired lately.

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 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 high-voltage engines (e.g. refrigerators with their compressors) couldn't be used on “the other side”.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/6.3, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Rickshaw Driver

Rickshaw are still commonly seen only in a few areas of Japan, with where I live in Kyoto being one of them. They're quite popular, both for common tourists and for wedding parties (an example of the later can be seen here; other posts with rickshaw can be seen here, here, and here). I happened to have snapped this shot on the outing last December that produced my Making the Best of Bright Light in Fall-Color Photography post.

Canon IXY DIGITAL 700 — ¹/40 sec, f/2.8 — full exif
Covered Parking

Anthony's creative play last year, involving the train set he got when he turned five years old, some packing Styrofoam, and some mini cars. If the mini cars look familiar, it's because they appeared on an earlier post, Anthony the Valet. I am, of course, biased, but I like Anthony's creativity, and have featured it from time to time, including:   Heavy Industries on the Kitchen Table,     Two Anthony Projects: Security Gate & Impromptu Airplane,    Creative Street-Sweeper Design,    and Preschool Car Repair.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 65 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/5, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Ferry

I'm not really big on abstract shots, but for some reason I feel partial to this shot I took while standing on a pitching ferry while traveling from the mainland to Miyajima Island, during last fall's trip to see Kousuke Atari in concert for the first time (at the Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima).

Miyajima is a pretty area, and I ended up with so many posts from that trip that I created a Miyajima category on my blog.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/60 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1250 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Some Random Fern

Taken at the same impromptu stopover that produced Chestnut on a Bed of Moss (with desktop-background bonus).

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/2500 sec, f/2.2, ISO 250 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Roof

The roof of one of the buildings on the grounds of Kyoto's Nijo Castle. I visited Nijo Castle for the first time last year, and despite having a bazillion shots, I've yet to post more than some of its heavy wooden gate, and one desktop-background pretty autumn scene. Must. Post. More....

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 26 mm — ¹/320 sec, f/4.5, ISO 320 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Cute Bench

Taken during yet another Kousuke Atari inspired trip: Sunrise in Takamatsu, Japan.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/4, ISO 250 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Palm-Tree Trunk

In the front yard of the “Horizon Club” bed and breakfast, on a remote southern-Japan island in the East China Sea.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/125 sec, f/2, ISO 1250 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Friendly Cup of Coffee

While visiting a friend's house, I was offered coffee. I loved the look of the presentation, of the cup on the old table with a nice patina, so I just had to snap a photo of it. It was much tastier than the $9 cup of coffee I had at a ritzy Tokyo cafe. I guess friendship makes everything better.

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 Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The island's main local specialty mean is keihan, a shredded-chicken rice/soup dish.

Fumie's grandmother lived in the Kyoto area for 50+ years after WWII, but she kept her Amami roots and continued to prepare keihan for her family when she had one. Her daughter, then, having grown up with the dish, continued to prepare it for her own family when she had one. And thus, her daughter – my wife, Fumie – grew up with it.

As such, when our first trip to Amami was being planned, trying lots of authentic keihan was definitely on the itinerary. In fact, once we landed, we had it even before checking into the hotel.

(These pictures are from the next day's keihan, because the pictures came out better in the 2nd day's more photogenic setting)

Keihan is a soup, but it is served in its component parts. If you look like a tourist (and I think my camera pretty much made that clear), they'll ask whether you need instructions for how to eat it.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/250 sec, f/1.4, ISO 500 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Toppings
shredded chicken · scallions · shredded egg · dried seaweed · shiitake · mikan powder · etc.

You start with regular Japanese sticky white rice in a bowl, then add the toppings in whatever proportion you like. Then add soup...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/125 sec, f/2, ISO 640 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Add soup

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/125 sec, f/2.5, ISO 800 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Ready to Enjoy

There is ample variation in the toppings among restaurants, but the real difference is in the soup. Sometimes it's great, and sometimes it's great.

In most of Japan, and especially in the Kyoto/Osaka area where I live, the most common word pronounced “keihan” is 京阪, meaning “Kyoto and Osaka” in general, and more specifically, it often refers to the Keihan Railway Company, one of the train companies that provides service between the two cities.

This was the only meaning for keihan that I knew until I became acquainted with Amami. Amami's keihan is 鶏飯, literally meaning chicken meal.

Enjoying the chicken meal is such a big part of our visits there (including one last meal at the airport restaurant, where the keihan is surprisingly good for being, well, in an airport) that it takes a bit of getting used to all the “Keihan” signs (in English letters) everywhere here that have nothing to do with food.

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 of Amami, prior to my first trip there during the new-year's holiday, as she talked about the place she left as a teenager and longed to return to. She last visited about 10 years ago, but a mild stroke soon after left further trips unlikely.

Meeting Her Great Grandson for the First Time
when Anthony was seven months old

Children have a way of tying together the future and the past, even more so, of course, when the children in question are your children's children's children.

Four Generations

The next picture was taken Jan 1, 2006, just after three-year-old Anthony surprised her with a big hug and a kiss (something that Japanese kids rarely do now, and certainly would have never done in past generations). She was a bit flustered the first time, but soon became accustomed to it.

Her husband and siblings all passed before her. She is survived by Fumie's folks, Fumie, Fumie's brother Shogo, me, and Anthony.

The funeral is tomorrow.

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 the gift shop was a spooky-style tree with three swings hanging from it, and a bunch of netting above to allow kids to climb its expansive branches in safety.

Spooky Tree and Swings

His favorite by far was the orange buoy, which he sat on while I pushed or swung him around.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/250 sec, f/6.3, ISO 100, fill flash — full exif & map — nearby photos
Holding on for Dear Life

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/5, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Exposure Was a Challenge
especially during the few times the sun peeked out
( Lightroom's “fill light” helped when I forgot to use fill flash )

Of course, focus and composition were also a challenge, doing everything with one hand while pushing him with the other, all the while having a cold.

Having a nice view helped.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/2500 sec, f/7.1, ISO 640 — full exif & map — nearby photos
View from the Swings

Besides the swing that climbing on the rocks, Anthony also really enjoyed playing with other kids who happened to be staying at the same time....

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 26 mm — ¹/60 sec, f/6.3, ISO 1250 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Silly Times with New Friends

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/320 sec, f/5, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Saying “Bye”

The day we left, we went to say “bye” to the boys he'd been playing with, and found them by the swings getting ready for some snorkeling. His way of saying “bye” was to get pushed super high on the swing, saying “watch!”. Kids are the same all over.

The big huge spooky tree with the swings seemed perfect for climbing, but, quite surprisingly, Anthony had very little interest. He tried it once, and returned to the swings.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/180 sec, f/5, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Tentative

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 now with other things lately (have you done your taxes yet?) so I haven't had time to go through our photos from the trip, so here are a few from the beginning, of Anthony playing on the beach in front of the hotel.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/5000 sec, f/3.5, ISO 320 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/250 sec, f/10, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos

There was a bright overcast with only the occasional bit of sun peaking through, so there wasn't much color in the water.

Our hotel was located near the north-east portion of the long, oddly shaped island (there's a map on my intro to Amami post), so we could see parts of it extending down to the south...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 35 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/9, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — ¹/320 sec, f/9, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Sea Sponges Are For Kicking

Well, I don't know whether it's a sea sponge or some kind of plant, but either way, Anthony found it eminently kickable.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 44 mm — ¹/100 sec, f/6.3, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Wet, Squishy, and Smelly

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/3.2, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos
I Like “Wet, Squishy, and Smelly”
(and Daddy likes how a thin depth of field can isolate the subject in a photo)

Ah, but those rocks in the background were just waiting to be climbed...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 44 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/750 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos

The seashell necklace was a gift from the hotel, given to Anthony at our welcome dinner the previous night.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos
View of the Hotel From the Rocks

Our hotel was the Bashayama-mura Resort, which was wonderfully low key and not at all like the high-end glitz that I imagine something like Club Med would be.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/250 sec, f/7.1, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos

At the far right you can barely make out the ropes of a couple of swings hanging from a spooky-type tree near the hotel. This was perhaps Anthony's favorite attraction of the entire trip.

Our flight and five days in paradise awaited.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
This Pretty Much Says it All
Dead sunflower in a field of pretty red and pink flowers
Amami Ooshima, in the East China Sea in southern Japan

Other than being sick the whole time, it actually was a nice trip, but being sick was only the start of what seems to have been a cursed vacation. So many little things went wrong that it started to become comical even while we were being besieged by them.

I don't like to complain (too much) on my blog, but I do want to record some of the issues we faced just so that I can revisit and laugh at them in later years. It was not a “vacation to hell” or anything like that... just a “one of those days” type vacation.

We went to Amami Ooshima Island in southern Japan, repeating an excellent new-year's trip that produced a bunch of posts with more still in the queue. The primary goal this time was for Fumie to attend a concert event that included an appearance by Kousuke Atari, a Japanese pop singer we like and have seen many times before.

Anyway, let me list some of the “issues” we faced....

1. I was sick the entire time.

2. Fumie's attraction for this particular Kouskuke Atari concert was that it was being held in his home town (the small city of Naze, on Amami Ooshima Island) and due to the nature of the event, he was expected to perform the traditional folk singing he was locally famous for before becoming a professional pop singer. I don't care for the twangy nature of this genre so didn't attend the concert, but Fumie was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately, it turns out that he did only one such song, as an encore. His concert was otherwise pretty much the same as all the others we've attended (which isn't bad, but disappointing considering the expectations).

   (As an example of this traditional music, try track 5 on this page for a CD he made six years ago, in his early 20s. Contrast that with his latest pop single, which (annoyingly) starts playing automatically when you visit his official site at his record label.)

3. Fumie's goal for the trip was the concert, but for myself, I wanted to be sure to visit Honohoshi Seaside, a “beach” that has grapefruit-sized smooth rocks instead of sand (seen on this earlier post), to make an audio recording of the surf, which – due to the rocks – makes a wonderfully interesting and soothing sound.

   We tried to make the two-hour drive on the 3rd day, but I was just too sick, so we had to return. I felt a bit better the next day, so we made the drive and arrived to promptly find that the video camera I'd prepared was not in my A/V backpack where I thought it was. I had the external mic and extra batteries, but no camera. I tore the car apart looking for it, but we must have left it at the hotel. Sigh.

4. To add insult to injury, I found out the next day that it was in the car while I was looking for it, but in an arm-rest compartment that I didn't realize was there (at least, not after having apparently placed the thing inside earlier in the trip).

5. After spending a few frustrating minutes trying to attach a polarizing filter at the beach, I discovered that I couldn't do so because there was a dent in the outer edge of the lens where the filter threads are.

   I've traditionally kept clear “protect” filters on my lenses, but lately have wondered whether the protection they afford is worth whatever degradation they cause to the image. I know that these filters can cause ghosting in really dark situations, but otherwise I've assumed that they don't degrade the image. Lately, though, I've thought to try without them until I can quantitatively measure their effect, so last week I took them off.

   Thus, when I bumped the edge of the lens sometime since then, I ended up damaging my $2,000 Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 zoom instead of an $80 filter.

   Doh!

6. After leaving Honohoshi Seaside, we thought to make a couple-hour detour toward the western (largely unpopulated) edge of the island to see the sunset. I used the map in the car navigation system to pick a likely spot, and we made the drive only to arrive to find that I'd not noticed a huge sub-island right off the coast, totally blocking any concept of a sunset. It was right there on the car-navi map; I was just stupid for not having noticed it earlier.

7. So, we returned to the hotel just in time before the restaurant closed, and our dinner was waiting for us. While eating, we found out that Kousuke Atari had eaten at the table right next to us, a couple of hours earlier. Had we not made the ill-fated attempt to see the sunset, we would have had dinner right next to him (and we would have become a bullet point on his “things that annoyed me during my trip home” post )

8. Our hotel package came with pre-planned breakfasts and dinners, and the volume of food they brought was so overwhelmingly astounding that I continually felt really bad about the egregious waste of food that no one human could possibly eat, even when not having a cold.

   The one day that I stood a chance to actually make a good dent in what they offered – the yakiniku barbecue on the night we just missed Kousuke Atari – I felt a bit queasy from the cold and couldn't do more than nibble.

9. At some point while taking pictures of Anthony running around on the beach, I realized that my camera was not in its highest-quality “raw mode”, but had somehow gotten switched to low-quality “basic jpg” mode. Ugh. I'm still a bad enough photographer that I rely on the latitude that shooting raw affords, and that was lost for a whole day's worth of pictures.

10. I got a call from Zak telling me that my blog had been down for the last couple of days, in case I wasn't aware of it. No, I wasn't. (With help from Zak and my brother, I was able to get things repaired, so their help is a bright spot that I appreciate.)

There really were some wonderful moments (and I'll share them another day), so I'm glad we went, but it did feel a bit cursed at times. I enjoy the location, so I look forward to going again sometime, preferably when I'm not sick(!)

Having gone also saved us from the apparently horrible cold and rainy weather in Kyoto during the time. We returned yesterday afternoon to a dreary Kyoto, with cherry blossoms approaching full bloom but appearing totally drab and pathetic. Traffic in our area was a nightmare, as it is twice every year, during cherry-blossom and fall-foliage seasons.

I returned to find 510 emails messages in my queue (all but a few being spam or related to my server problems), 360 unread messages on the private Lightroom beta-testers forum, and 100+ unread items on the blogs I read. Add to that the release of Lightroom 2.0 beta that I was out of town for, and the 1,207 photos we took, and I had my work cut out for me.

Today, my cold is a bit better and the weather is wonderful. The sun is out and the cherry blossoms look great, just begging to be photographed. I'm not sure I quite have the energy today, but the forecast is for ever-improving weather for the next few days, so things continue to look up.

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 islands in the East China Sea.

We're getting ready for another trip to Amami this weekend, having visited the first time over the New-Year's holidays. I don't know that we'll run into Hirozou-san, but Fumie has been exchanging emails, so I hope so. We really enjoyed the day we spent together.

I tended to take pictures of Anthony, so most pictures I have of Hirozou-san are him interacting with Anthony, which he was excellent at. He was always teaching, although Anthony never realized it.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 22 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/3.5, ISO 320 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Peek

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/90 sec, f/4.5, ISO 250 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Sure, He Can Climb!
which is just as well, 'cause he's already started....

We spent a lot of time at the Spooky Tree, which we'd never have found without him. He was always offering little tidbits of information about what we were looking at, or the surroundings, or things we passed. He knows everything, but tempers that with a very good “you'll find this entertaining or interesting” filter.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/160 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos
How About If I do This!?

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/320 sec, f/2, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Hamming It Up For Anthony

He doesn't speak English fluently, but guides a fair number of English-speaking clients, mostly botanists and bird watchers who come from all corners of the world to visit the unique species of these islands.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/180 sec, f/3.5, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
A Serious Discussion...

... that turns out to be setup to....

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/2, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
...Doing Something With a Seed (??)

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Ah, The Old “Seed On the Nose” Trick

(I didn't hear the conversation so I don't know what the seed on the nose was about, but it was a hit with Anthony.)

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Explaining Shells and Sea Creatures
picked up on the beach

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Enjoying Life

He grew up and still lives on Amami Ooshima (the largest of the islands in the group), and you can tell that he loves every moment.

Hirozou-san's sites (in Japanese):   blog  ·  business

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 small and sparsely populated Kakeroma-jima Island of southern Japan's Amami Island Group in the East China Sea. We visited Amami over the New-Year holiday.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/60 sec, f/7.1, ISO 800 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Cluster of Roots Dangling Down

The whole tree seems to be made up of nothing but twisty tangled clumps of aerial roots that drop down to establish new trunks. As time progresses, they get sturdier and become trunks, branching out to start the process again, thus expanding the tree's coverage.

It creates a decidedly haunted-story feeling, both similar and different from the spooky Amami mangroves we would see the next day.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/180 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Creepy

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Self-Extending Support

Maybe this “expanding coverage” is where Japanese gardeners got the idea for adding supports to tree branches in order to allow them to grow to unnatural lengths, as we've seen many times in passing on this blog (recently here and here).

At some point it becomes difficult to tell whether to consider something a dangling root, or a trunk in its own right...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/60 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Trunk/Root/Stem of Some Sort

The sides of the trunks had so many roots glommed onto them that they appeared more like the plumbing on a space-shuttle engine than a tree.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/1.6, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Someone had strung a net up among the roots/trunks (at some point it's hard to tell the difference) to make a hammock, which we took turns bouncing in...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — full exif & map — nearby photos

There was also a long rope for swinging on...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — full exif & map — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 32 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — full exif & map — nearby photos

It was right on the ocean, so the view was nice...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 23 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/9, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
View from the Tree

We were there late in the afternoon on a fairly blustery, cloudy day, but before we left we got some of the last rays of the sun peeking through, which made for nice color (that sadly probably doesn't come through unless you're viewing with a color-managed browser on a nice display)...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 18 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Spooky, In Warm Tones

Two minutes later, I snapped the sunset picture seen here.

More Amami-related posts are listed in my blog's Amami-Islands Category.

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 pool you can go into without getting wet...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Kanazawa Station

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/90 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Inside-Out Pool

However, those plans got interrupted because Saturday was the graduation ceremony at Anthony's preschool, which created its own subject matter that awaits posting. I did do the one already, but I could do a few more just on the cuteness of Anthony's classmates, including....

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 250 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Grace and Poise: Nonoka-chan

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/500 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
The Ever-Delightful Kana-chan

Kana's been on my blog many times. Some of my favorites include Anthony Getting Out of Line and the related Anthony Staying In Line, With Kana, and also Silly Mountaintop Lunch With Kana-Chan.

So, after that event I thought I'd write about it for a few days, but that got interrupted immediately because of our trip back home. I'd hauled Anthony's bicycle to school on the back of my own, and so we could return from the graduation ceremonies by riding home (about three kilometers!), which includes a trip through the grounds of the Imperial Palace in Kyoto. Of course, that leads to many opportunities for a geeky dad with a camera who wants to foist pictures of his child on the world...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/7.1, ISO 250 — full exif & map — nearby photos
It's a Big Park

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/5.6, ISO 250 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Pushing with One Hand, Snapping Pics with the Other

So, that was Saturday, and I thought that finally Sunday (yesterday) I could get started on catching up, but it turns out that yesterday we made an impromptu six-hour round trip to a really interesting temple in Gifu-ken with Fumie's mom. I could post every day or the next month with new and interesting shots from this temple, which is full of cut stone of all kinds, and a lot of paper cranes...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/125 sec, f/3.2, ISO 500 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Ropes of Origami Cranes

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm — ¹/180 sec, f/2.8, ISO 800 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Stone Lanterns and Such

I thought today I might actually get through a 24-hour period without adding 100 pictures to my “must share!” pile, but that turned out to be wishful thinking when Monet's dad, Arthur, invited us to a really fun playground in nearby Otsu. We had intended to go to the Yumekko Playland that I wrote about before (and about which I still have plenty to post), but it was closed, so he took us to a most-excellent park nearby.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/3.2, ISO 320 — full exif & map — nearby photos
This was a “Rocket”

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 320 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Anthony Loved Pretending
to be a neutrino passing through a carbon atom
(no, not really)

This park was within sight of Zak's condo, so I immediately called him up and give him grief for having kept this most-excellent park to himself. I then proceeded to take 249 photos.

So, that's just a hint of the new things that I want to write about, and that's just stuff added in the last week or so. Even after having cleared out hundreds of throwaways, my photo library has 1,598 pictures so far this month, although that includes 425 pictures I took at Monet's ballet recital last week that came out pretty poorly because I had too little skill to overcome the too-little light. Still, Monet was cute, as always.

I could look back to most any week lately and find as much stuff that still awaits.

We're heading to Amami (again) at the end of the month, but I still have so many things to post from our earlier trip that I'd like to add to my Amami category, including a freaky tree straight from a horror movie, and the most affable and interesting Hirozo-san...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/60 sec, f/8, ISO 800 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Haunted Tree

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/2000 sec, f/2, ISO 400 — full exif & map — nearby photos
Hirozo-san: Amami Guide Extraordinaire
Hirozou Yasuda

I feel totally overwhelmed, and it doesn't help that cherry-blossom season is fast approaching...