
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — 1/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Happy
A cake from October 29th, 2008
( placed on this post in 2014 for reasons we'll see below )
Today is the 25th anniversary of my first arrival in Japan.
来日25周年になりました!
It was June 19th, 1989 that I flew into Tokyo from California after having finished grad school and then lived with my brothers for several months while waiting for my work visa to be approved. I was met at the airport by Krish Kulkarni, whom I had never met, but had no trouble finding because he's the twin brother of my best friend at grad school, Ram Kulkarni (who later went on to be the best man at my wedding, and I at his).
A day or two later I made my way down to the Kyoto/Osaka region, where I started work as an engineer at Omron Tateishi Denki (オムロン立石電機).
I worked at Omron for about eight years, though spending much of the time in The States at Carnegie Mellon University as a “visiting researcher” (I was really a babysitter for a room full of computers that Omron had donated).
I eventually moved to The States to work for Yahoo!, but not long before I met the woman I would marry. She happened to be Japanese, and after about eight years in Silicon Valley we moved back to Japan, setting up our lives in Kyoto. That was 10 years ago this spring.
Along the way we moved into where we live now, I picked up photography as a hobby in earnest when I bought my first dSLR, and I started to develop plugins for Adobe Lightroom.
And that brings me to my second milestone. Almost six years ago I released my Geoencoding Support plugin. It was the eighth plugin for Adobe Lightroom out of what so far has been about fifty.
Back then, when I first announced it on October 29th 2008, the plugin didn't have any documentation beyond what I wrote on the announcement post. I should have provided complete documentation, but I didn't..... until today. Today, almost six years later, I finally got around to it, and changed the plugin's home page from a placeholder to a long description of all the plugin can do. If you use the plugin, check it out.
So why didn't I write up the documentation when I released the plugin? My Lightroom catalog tells me that I was busy that day with a party at Anthony's preschool for all the kids who had a birthday in October. So, I thought it would be fitting to post a few photos from that 2008 party today...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 38mm — 1/160 sec, f/5, ISO 3200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Party Preparation

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 35mm — 1/200 sec, f/5, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Happy Birthday!”

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — 1/200 sec, f/4, ISO 900 — map & image data — nearby photos
Buffet Lunch

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 62mm — 1/200 sec, f/4, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Waiting To Start
he'd just turned six years old; now he's 11

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 52mm — 1/200 sec, f/4, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Building His Sandwich

iPhone 3Gs — f/2.8 — map & image data — nearby photos
Using My Camera
A Nikon D700 with a Nikkor 24-70/2.8 is heavy stuff for a newly-minted six year old

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — 1/200 sec, f/3.5, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Three Cakes
for the three years' worth of kids in the school

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 48mm — 1/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 720 — map & image data — nearby photos
Showing His Craft Project
I was happy to finally get the plugin documentation done today. Some of my other plugins have okay documentation, but perhaps 40 need serious work. Perhaps I'll start on the next in another 25 years...
Congratulations on the 25 years!
Jeffrey didn’t mention that he played a significant role in the early days of the EDICT dictionary project, and wrote the first ongoing WWW-based server using it (which is still running.) He also put me in touch with Jack Halpern, which has proved a fruitful and long-lasting friendship.
Good luck with the next 25 years.
BTW, オムロン立石電機って…
Jim
Oops, thanks, fixed, I shouldn’t be trying to post at 2am. Good memories working with you on EDICT. I think it had about 6,000 entries when I joined in. I spent a lot of time writing scripts to find errors in the Japanese… if only I’d spent half as much time actually learning Japanese. 🙂 —Jeffrey
from Rockport Tx
How about a crowd sourced wiki?
I’m sure that some of us could add our knowledge on how to use your plugins.
Yeah, I should look into that… it’s just that spending the energy to set it up — a win in the long run — costs too much in the short run. —Jeffrey
Cool!
I still remember a guy who was stationed in Japan during the Occupation, who told me Japan is like a drug, the longer one stays, the more difficult it is to tear oneself away from it.
Hi Jeffery!
Came across your blog last night, and can I just say, this blog is AMAZING. You’ve fully explored so many different cultural sides of Japan, and your photos are also of high quality – without your blog, I wouldn’t be able to see so many cultural differences between Japan and the world! Thankyou!
BTW, how do I subscribe to your blog? I’m only able to subscribe to posts, but not your blog itself.
Thanks for the help, and please continue to update this blog!
Isabella
Thanks for your kind words(!) The blog is, for the most part, just posts. If I add a page of evergreen content (e.g. a home page for a new Lightroom plugin), I make a post announcing it. —Jeffrey
Congrats on the anniversary! How long did it take you to learn to speak and read Japanese? I’ve always been fascinated with the country and culture and would love to travel there one day. I stumbled on your blog a few years back when looking for photos of Japan and have learned much through your lens since! 🙂
Despite Japanese being so easy (heck, over here, even kids can speak it), I’m still in the process of learning. —Jeffrey
Congratulations! Japan is the country to be in and Kyoto is one of the best places in it.
Well done!
Congratulations on your 25th Anniversary! May life bring many more years of happy life in Japan for you and your family!
Griselda Garcia, Arlignton TX