Last week I did what I suppose is my first purposeful portraiture photo shoot. I've done plenty of impromptu portraits (such as these or these), and I've found the use of the word "impromptu" frees me from the worry of having to be good: it's impromptu, so hey, if I come away with something nice that nice, but it's not expected.

This time was different, meeting with the express intent to capture some father/son photos. But the subject matter, a friend Tetsuo and his younger child, Issei (一星), made it difficult to get a bad picture. A general rule that [...]

I really don't care to use the iPhone camera, much less share the photos it produces, but when it's all you've got, it's all you've got. I occasionally have lunch with Roman Catholic priest Fr. Graham McDonnell ("Father Mac"), and as we were about to start our salads, he remembered that it was the anniversary of his ordination. 54 years.

During WWII he was in the US Navy as a radar repair engineer, then he spent nine years in seminary, and a year later, in 1960, came to Kyoto and has been here since.

He's been on my blog a [...]

Two months ago I posted about a visit to Suntory's Yamazaki whisky distillery a ways south of Kyoto. After that tour was done, we (Paul Barr and I) hopped into a taxi for the 10 minute ride to hit the tour at Suntory's beer brewery, in Nagaokakyo city, an area where I happened to have lived in the mid 90s.

Unlike the old distillery, which is full of sweet aroma and deep, rich photogenic character at every turn, the beer brewery is a bastion of modern sterile industrial design, featuring all the warmth and character of the inside of a [...]

Last week during the transit of Venus, I took the opportunity to check out the astronomical observatory I've seen for years on a nearby mountain. I've always wanted to visit... I was deeply into astronomy as a teenager, going so far as to start to grind a mirror for an 8" reflector telescope I intended to build, when it all got left behind after seeing a computer for the first time.

Anyway, I still have interest, so I decided to take a hike up there to check the place out. On the way I snapped a few photos...

The last [...]

My last two days have been an almost scene-for-scene repeat of the atrial fibrillation episode I had a year ago, written about in "A Good Day, Courtesy of Suntory and a Cute Cardiologist", except that this time was much worse in the sense that the cardiologist was not cute.

It started yesterday morning, so last night I went to the hospital to pre-check the procedures, and this morning was there when they opened at 8:00, and by 11:30 I had had my electrocardiogram and by noon they were pumping Propofol into me:

This time felt much different than last time... [...]