NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/200 sec, f/4, ISO 2200 — full exif
Inspiration from an Eight-Year-Old

My 8-year-old son, Anthony, came into my den while I was watching video of the devastating tsunami that hit up north a few days ago. We're untouched here in Kyoto, but of course he's heard that some bad event happened. I showed him a few of the less graphic videos, and described a bit about the hardship that the survivors must be enduring. He seemed to grasp that it was a bad situation, and wandered off.

Later, we found the note above on my wife's desk. It says:

He placed 112 yen (about $1.25), which I think is all he had left after a recent shopping trip.

Of course, his selflessness chokes me up... but I hesitated whether I should share this on my blog for fear of coming across as the over-proud parent I am.

But on the Japanese news they're reporting that governments in the affected areas are faced with an awkward problem... there are so many people here who want to do something to help in a meaningful way, but when it comes down to it, individuals entering the wasteland to help probably make more trouble than good, so at this point the governments are turning away all but large professional organizations that can look after themselves as well as those they're trying to help. At this point, the best an individual can do is send money to those large organizations.

Yahoo! Japan is credited in the domestic media as having set up the first large-scale acceptance for donations for the earthquake, but outside of Japan one's first thought is likely a chapter of the Red Cross. If you'd like to donate....

• You can donate $10 via your cell-phone bill by texting “REDCROSS” to 90999.
• Google US has an English site for donating to Japanese Red Cross Society.
• If you use Apple iTunes, you can donate to the American Red Cross via your iTunes account via this link.
• Yahoo! US has a links to organizations that can help in Japan, including the American Red Cross.
• Red Cross in England: British Red Cross
• Red Cross in Australia: Australian Red Cross
• Red Cross in Germany: Deutsches Rotes Kreuz

I feel an overwhelming sense of helplessness being so close but not being able to do anything, so perhaps if my boy's note inspires someone to help, I've done something.

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/8, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Prepared for Spring

When I stopped to photograph the large blossoms seen in last month's “Signs of Spring Start to Bud in Kyoto”, on the same outing that yielded “Stark Tree” and “Still a Bit Of Snow In Kyoto”, I also snapped pictures of the fields visible off the side of the road. I think they're pretty and so intended to post them with the other photos from the outing, but realized today that I had prepared them but not posted them, so here they are.

The Japanese landscape can be brutally ugly with utility poles and wires everywhere, but at the same time is full of beauty on both the macro and micro scales.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/320 sec, f/8, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos

Chances are slim that I would have ever visited any of the many towns wiped off the face of the earth by the tsunami the other day, but in looking at these pictures today a thought came to me lamenting that now I'll never have the chance to visit them and photograph their particular beauty, and I felt thoroughly selfish for it.

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 195 mm — ¹/320 sec, f/7.1, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hope

Desktop-Background Versions
Standard: 1024×768  ·  1440×1080  ·  1600×1200      Widescreen:  1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600

March is a time of hope in Japan... hope for a good cherry-blossom season, hope for a nice spring, hope for the coming new school/fiscal year (the school year and most companies' fiscal year start in April). Maybe this week has more worry than hope, but hope will return.

I mentioned the other day in “Surprising Early Cherry-Blossom Preview Hits Kyoto” (about a snowfall that made the cherry trees look as if they are in bloom), it's about time for a “Cherry-Blossom Preview” type post, and I linked to some preview posts from earlier years. I'd still like to do one, but when it comes down to it, I don't have all that many good cherry-blossom pictures in my archives.

Still, I rummaged through some folders from the last few years, and collected some pictures that look interesting to me, perhaps after some futzing in Lightroom. The one above, from this outing two years ago, has a bit of the “Funky Joy” treatment, which we can all use a bit of right now.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/6400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Childhood Joys

An almost identical shot led this post last year. It's such a joy to see well-behaved children play, so I'm posting this shot from the sequence.

Here's one that's been processed to exaggeration, but I like the result, especially when viewed close up. Sort of “artsy”... a bit like the prints I hung in my room, but bolder...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 42 mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Canal and Blossoms
Kyoto Biwako Canal, Kyoto Japan

The cherry-blossom season two years ago wasn't very good, with a lot of rain and gloom, but a clear dusk with good timing can make even half-hearted blossoms look good, so a few shots similar to the sequence seen in “Evening Cherry Blossoms, and some White-Balance Gymnastics”....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 32 mm — 20 sec, f/13, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Prior to the Lightup

Desktop-Background Versions
Standard: 1024×768  ·  1440×1080  ·  1600×1200      Widescreen:  1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 56 mm — 2 sec, f/9, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lightup
it would have been nice if they turned the lights on earlier, when the dusk was still vibrant

Desktop-Background Versions
Standard: 1024×768  ·  1440×1080  ·  1600×1200      Widescreen:  1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 42 mm — 1.6 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Full Coverage
lots of us camped at the bend in the canal

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — 4 sec, f/6.3, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Other Direction was Pretty, Too
but not as pretty

The long view down the canal from the elbow bend is the best view, but other areas are not without merit...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm — 2.5 sec, f/7.1, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos

Later that same season, after Anthony started first grade, on the way home from the ceremony we stopped to view the river of petals continually laid down by the now-past-their-prime cherry trees...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/11, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Unending Flow
or so it seemed

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 300 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/8, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Almost Weeping

Desktop-Background Versions
Standard: 1024×768  ·  1440×1080  ·  1600×1200      Widescreen:  1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/8000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Carpet of Blossoms

I think I like the whole “carpet of blossoms” effect of cherry blossoms more than their fluffy-tree effect. There's just something uplifting about watching the blossom petals get thrown about by a light breeze.

Of course, sometimes something decidedly more naughty than a light breeze does the throwing...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
BIG handful
7½-year-old Anthony

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
There They Go

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Aftermath

Another from this sequence, just before “Aftermath”, is shown here.

Here's hoping for a good cherry-blossom season.... and more.

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

As I mentioned yesterday, we're not affected here in Kyoto by the big quakes yesterday, but of course it's big news. There are lots of amazing photos out there... I've found the location for a few so that you can see the “before” images on Google Maps...

Photos at The Big Picture	Google Street View: biggest white building in the center of the top photo, upper-left of the second photo, so you can look around, to see what the town looked like when it still existed.
Photo at The Big Picture	Google Street View: the red building in the lower left
Photo at The Frame	Google Map: triangular building in the foreground
Photo at The Big Picture	Google Street View: area on fire behind houses
Photo at The Big Picture	Google Maps: area in view; camera is to the north, looking south
Photo at The Big Picture	Google Map: Sendai Airport's tarmac
Photo at The Big Picture	Google Map: car staging area (just a guess on the location, but looks right)
Photo at The Frame	Google Map: Sendai Train Station
And if you've seen the video from the helicopter that I mentioned yesterday, of the tsunami's relentless march over the rural villages and farmland, approaching a road with traffic, you'll have noticed the truck stopped on the edge of a bridge with a man on top watching events unfold. The location of the man and his truck is here, from which then you can see the whole area affected.

UPDATE: Google now has some post-tsunami imagery overlays for Google Earth, here and here.

UPDATE: NYTimes has an interactive before/after photo presentaiton.

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

There was a cluster of large earthquakes in northeastern Japan today; we didn't feel any of them here in Kyoto.

The main one, a magnitude 8.9 9.0 monster that would fit as the 7th largest earthquake in recorded history at the U.S. Geological Survey, just above the one in Chile last year (Wikipedia concurs), was luckily fairly far out to sea. It's a smaller earthquake closer to the mainland half an hour later that really rocked Tokyo. It's during that later/closer quake that I was first alerted to the situation here in Kyoto when a friend texted me “Big f#@*!ng earthquake. Currently under table.”

Then I went to my go-to source for Japanese real-time earthquake info, I saw that the larger one had hit earlier, a whopping 7 on the Japanese scale of local earthquake perception, which maxes out at 7: “Thrown by the shaking and impossible to move at will.”. I hadn't seen a shindo number that high since the big quake in Kobe in 1995 (one which I most certainly did feel).

For the first time since the World Wide Web became mainstream, I turned on NHK News in English this evening, four hours after the strongest quakes. The first subject was the transport gridlock in Tokyo, since most train services have shut down for the day and some bus lines as well.

Eventually they got to the tsunami damage, with some amazing video from helicopters of a tsunami washing over an area of sparsely populated farmland/countryside (see halfway down on this page). This particular area was hit an hour and a half after the quake, so people had plenty of warning, but in watching the video I see the video cut away just as the wave reaches a road with moving cars (yet the announcer makes no mention of it), so it's a bit eerie. I hope people are okay.

It seems not many have been hurt or killed, but there's a heck of a lot of damage, and tens of millions of people dependent on the transportation infrastructure are going to be hurting today and tomorrow. [UPDATE: I clearly read things wrong that first night.]

As I watch the news, every so often an automated system flashes up an alert of a new earthquake in the magnitude 5 and 6 range. We see these from time to time any time an even mild quake hits anywhere in Japan.

But wow, just as I'm writing the above, a different kind of alert just popped up... one very much in your face about a particularly big tremor just detected (but without additional info at this early stage), so it seems that it's still an ongoing.

They're also now showing live video of tsunami finally hitting some areas from the earlier tremors.

Anyway, we're fine here in Kyoto, far from the ocean and the epicenters of these quakes. Our prayers are with those affected.

The friend that texted me during the quake was up in Tokyo for what was supposed to have been a day trip for a conference, but he's stuck up there and the phones aren't letting calls go through, so I've spent the evening chatting via the iPhone WhatsApp SMS app, shuttling messages back and forth to his family who can't otherwise contact him.

That reminds me a bit of the situation after the big Kobe quake in 95... I couldn't make a phone call across the street, but I could email family in America. I took a few months from writing the first edition of my book to create a web site (yes, a web site in 1995) to help people outside of Japan find out about affected folks in Japan, including long lists of the 6,000+ dead. Hopefully such a thing won't be needed this time.

In the hour and a half since I started writing this post, there have been well over a dozen magnitude 5+ tremors, so I guess it remains to be seen...

Update: small update on the friend stuck in Tokyo. Rather than spend the night at the conference venue, he walked an hour to a friend's place. I just got a text that he had arrived safely, but the elevators have been stopped so he has to walk up the stairs. To the 53rd floor.