I posted earlier today about Kanazawa Station (Kanazawa, Japan) and how it does a wonderful job of mixing traditional Japanese with modern lines.

As I mentioned, the entire space is visually, geometrically rich, so I definitely had fun trying to capture interesting angles. The abstract results were sometimes enhanced (I perhaps fool myself by thinking) with some creative post-processing in Adobe Lightroom, to add a bit of an edge.

Clearly, this is not my area, photographically speaking, but (photographically speaking) it was quite fun. I just wish that I hadn't been so rushed for time.

Last March, Fumie and I traveled to the city of Kanazawa to see Kousuke Atari in concert, and while photography is not allowed during the concert, Japan always offers plenty to enjoy in that respect. I've already posted about Kanazawa's Kenrokuen Gardens, and some hotel-lobby wedding-party shots I took.

Today, I'll post about the geometrically-rich entrance atrium of Kanazawa's JR (Japan Railway) station, one scene from which was the lead photo of my embarrassment of riches post some time ago.

The main feature when viewed from the front is a strongly modern (postmodern?) interpretation of a traditional Shinto shrine gate. [...]

Fumie is still miserably sick, so after school, I took Anthony over to play with three-year-old Gen (Zak's son, who has appeared on my blog plaing with Anthony here and here).

We went exploring in western Otsu where the city meets the mountain, with plenty to see and photograph, although I didn't quite get as many photos as yesterday. We got back late (after a delicious Zak-cooked meal... thanks!) and I haven't even looked through all the pics yet, but I wanted to post a few before heading to bed....

A couple of hours (and a couple of hundred pictures) [...]

Well, I fall further behind. I had been planning to post the answer to the What am I? quiz from the other day (none of the guesses so far are even close), but Fumie has been quite sick, so I wanted to get Anthony out of the house so that she could rest. I'd been wanting to try some nearby hiking trails, and I ended up with enough photos to fill at least five different blog posts.

We started out after lunch with the grueling seven-minute drive up to Shogunzuka. (We hit a few red lights, so it took longer [...]

Fumie's Grandmother, Kine Imai, passed away at the end of April. This past weekend was the second part of the funeral, the kotsuiri – 骨入 – the "placing of the bones".

A month or so ago, as part of the main funeral, the body was cremated such that there were still some rather large chunks of bone remaining. A typical Japanese (Buddhist) funeral includes a ceremony where family members use chopsticks to pluck certain bone fragments with symbolic meaning from the ashes, placing them into a small pot (as shown here), and we all did this, including five-year-old Anthony. It's [...]