Archive for the 'Japan' CategoryPosts relating to Japan and things Japanese
In yesterday's "Colorful Ladies' Wardrobe" post we looked at some of the young ladies preparing for their turn at traditional Japanese archery at the rite-of-passage event described in "Total Discipline: Anatomy of a Japanese Archer's Shot". Before and after their turn they were as lively as you'd expect a bunch of twenty-year-old girls to be, [...]
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My recent coverage of the traditional Japanese Archery event described last week in "Total Discipline: Anatomy of a Japanese Archer’s Shot" has so far covered mostly the guys (such as with the previous post, "More Badass Japanese Archery"), but there were about as many gals as guys. Most of the time I was at the [...]
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During the Japanese-Archery event last week that I've been posting about, after the 2,000+ young adults did their thing, a few dozen instructors also got to shoot. I don't know how they were chosen to participate... perhaps it's only the instructors of the kids who hit the target? Anyway, as last week's "Total Discipline: Anatomy [...]
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Continuing with the rite-of-passage Japanese-archery event I've been posting about (第62回 三十三間堂大的全国大会) , after being driven out by the oppressive crowds at the shooting range, I spent some time with the more-manageable crowds in the greater temple compound. I took the three shots above before having ventured into the scrum at the shooting range, but [...]
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In my post yesterday about Japanese archery, I concentrated on the short moment each of the 2,000+ archers got during Sunday's day-long event (第62回 三十三間堂大的全国大会) at the Sanjusangendo Temple. Except in the world of calm and concentration that they brought with them for that moment on the shooting platform, the event was an absolute madhouse, [...]
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As I mentioned in yesterday's "Traditional Archery Like a Boss" post, I made my first visit to the annual tooshiya archery event (第62回 三十三間堂大的全国大会) at the Sanjusangendo Temple in Kyoto, a half-hour walk from my place. Japanese archery, kyuudou, is a discipline -- neither purely sport nor art -- comparable in one sense to karate [...]
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I went to the tooshiya archery event for the first time, held annually at the Sanjusangendo Temple in Kyoto today. The official name of the event is 「第62回 三十三間堂大的全国大会」. Mostly it's for ranked archers who have turned 20 years old this past year (and there were 2,132 that took part today), but this was one [...]
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After what's turned out to be a monochromatic year so far, I'm happy to get some color back in my blog. The fall-foliage season is Kyoto's most glorious, and it runs a long six or seven weeks, so I've got more fodder for posts than I could actually process, so I'll dip in for today's [...]
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This year has gotten off slowly for me, having woken up January 1st with a cold and all, but with "Inspired Artistic Temple Shot" and its followup, "Simple Temple Sliding Wall", I seem to have a black-and-white theme going, so I'll continue that today with a post about charcoal, from last year's visit to Japanese [...]
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I've been taking it easy this year because I'm still recovering from the cold I woke up with on 1/1, but after posting Paul Barr's inspired creation yesterday, I thought I'd look into my own photo archive to see what I was doing when he took that photo. I was standing next to Paul, but [...]
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Rarely does a photo take my breath away, but this rendition by Paul Barr does it every time I come across it. I don't know what it is about it, but if you'll excuse the pun, I'm really drawn to it. Paul recently got an iPhone 4s, and to compliment its camera he loaded a [...]
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I posted the other day about the wonderful and moody Kosanji Temple (高山寺) -- commonly referred to, in error, as the "Kozanji" Temple -- in the north-west mountains of Kyoto. Part of the mood was the really dynamic weather... brilliantly sunny above the high canopy of the towering pines, punctuated by dark clouds and fits [...]
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On the way home from the park with Anthony, I noticed preparations for the new-year hatsumode "first visit to the shrine". As happens every new year, the street leading to the Heian Shrine will be closed off for several days, and the sidewalk lined with food vendors. The preparations that I noticed were for the [...]
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Earlier this month, on the wonderful day in Kyoto's Takao area that I mentioned in the rainbow post a few weeks ago, we visited two temples. I posted a few scenes from the first in "On The Path To Northwest Kyoto's Shingoji Temple", and while I have a bazillion more from there that I want [...]
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A month ago in "Another Day of Amazing Fall Colors in Kyoto" I posted on photo similar to the one above, from that day's trip to the Imakumano Kannonji Temple (今熊野観音寺) in eastern Kyoto. The tree with the red leaves had particularly impressive colors, but only when viewed from about where the group is standing. [...]
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On paper, the Japanese economy is in the dumps, but from what I can tell, it's really cooking. As I noted last month, I've been using my own feet as a mode of transportation lately. Having had errands near the corner of Kyoto's Sanjo and Karasuma streets a few times in the last week, I've [...]
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Last week Anthony got together with a friend, Kenny, for some play by Kyoto's Kamogawa river... The water level is about the lowest it ever gets (compare to almost flood level), which allowed the boys to climb down and throw rocks... Of course, the first thing on the agenda was throwing rocks, which all kids [...]
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(The large version of this photo might be interesting... I'm not sure... but this small thumbnail certainly isn't.) I went out to Fushimi Castle the other day with Paul Barr and Nicolas, a French/American guy I met briefly at Gion Matsuri at the start of the summer when he noticed my big lens and introduced [...]
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I included a pretty bamboo-and-leaf photo on my previous post, even though it wasn't related to the post, just to have something pretty, but I tend to like to share stories/context instead of just photos, so this post fills in that gap for that photo. Just outside the Ryoanji Temple is a path/sidewalk that leads [...]
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I was sort of amused to read "Stop Advertising in Photo Magazines – Head West to the Web" on Trey Ratcliff's "Stuck in Customs" photo-travel blog, about how his $30,000 ad buy in some photography magazines was a bust. What caught my attention was not that print is dying, but that here's a guy with [...]
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