We're visiting my sister in Bellingham Washington, where all Anthony's American cousins will get together for the first time in four years (this time with one more than last time).

We happen to arrive just in time for cousin Josh (7½) getting to be a bat boy for the first time, at a Bellingham Bells collegiate summer league game. He's attended many games and sat near the dugout, so he knew the players and was super excited at this opportunity (especially since one must normally be at least 11 years old, but they interviewed him and decided he knew enough [...]

Picking up from yesterday's "Anatomy of a Photoshoot by Someone Who Has No Clue About Them", the rambling story of a photo shoot of first-time model Yuko by clueless photographers (Paul Barr and me), yesterday ended with Yuko sitting in the shade in front of a lake on the grounds of the dazzling Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷大社) in Kyoto...

When it was my turn, I shot a few different looks before I realized that I wasn't really getting any of the background...

The shallow depth of field, which I normally like a lot, made the background completely irrelevant, losing out [...]

Anthony (fifth grade) has a school field trip today for which Fumie had to make a bento lunch. It's been a while since he needed one of these, though when in preschool (five years ago!) he needed a bento every day.

The challenges of bento design are many... food that he'll eat without being fussy, food that will stay fresh without refrigeration until lunch, a presentation that is both pleasing and robust against the bumps and bruises of the inside of a backpack, all while being both healthy and sufficiently nutritious for a long day of hiking. It's perhaps easier [...]

I'd like to share a bit more from my New Year's trip to visit my folks in Ohio. It was notable in particular because it was the first time for my parents to actually meet my wife's parents.

Anthony and I left Kyoto first, having been seen off at the Osaka airport by Fumie's folks...

Anthony had a lot of homework over the break (boo, hiss), so we had to squeeze study in everywhere we could. Here, at the gate while waiting for the plane, he's memorizing Japan's 47 "states" and their capitals...

After a somewhat harrowing flight via Tokyo [...]

As I mentioned the other day in "Candid Portrait of an Athlete", 10-year-old Anthony has been playing water polo for about a year. His first actual game was last month, during a series of matches over the course of a three-day tournament at the Namihaya Dome (なみはやドーム) in Osaka.

Photographically, the situation was pretty bad... spectators we were behind glass and had very limited mobility....

The large windows on the opposite wall made for blinding backlight when the sun was out. One day it was pouring rain, so the light was more even then.

Anthony was apprehensive about participating because [...]