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D700 + 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm, heavily cropped — 1/160 sec, f/5, ISO 6400 — full exif
My View of Today's Eclipse
Today saw a total solar eclipse visible across a thin sliver of earth, starting in India, cutting across China, then clipping a few southern islands of Japan.
Before I talk about the eclipse, allow me to rant about one of the most asinine aspects of Japanese culture, one of those “it's just the way it is” things that distresses and inconveniences everyone, but still never changes...
The tiny World-Heritage jungle island Yakushima, 50 miles off the southern coast of the Japanese Mainland, lies just within the northern end of totality, while the larger Amami Oshima 150 miles further south (half way to Okinawa) lies across the southern edge of totality. In between there are a dozen or so scattered postage-stamp islands, only a few of which have some human presence.
More than a year ago, Fumie was able to secure a hotel reservation on Yakushima by winning a lottery for one of the last rooms available on the island. This was more than a year ago, mind you. We were excited, me mostly because of the eclipse, but both of us because Yakushima has long been on our want-to-visit list. Its dense-forest ecology is believed to be unchanged since ancient times, and it's apparently quite beautiful.
Some time during last winter, I went to actually get our plane tickets there, and found out that I couldn't: Japanese domestic tickets go on sale at 9am two months prior to the day of the flight, so on that day (May 22) at 9am, those who had been planning for years would vie with those who thought about it the previous day on a whim, for the few tickets available.
I say “few tickets” because as I mentioned, Yakushima is a World Heritage site, and frankly, they don't want people visiting very much. There are seven small-body flights a day, and the number would not be increased for the once-in-a-dozen-lifetimes event. (Actually, Yakushima gets an unfair share of the world's eclipse experiences, because they'll be treated to an annular eclipse in just three years, and another in 2074; the next total eclipse visible there is in 2218.)
So, if you want one of the tickets: at 9am on the day, you try to get through on the phone or the website, and if you're luckily enough to do so, you will find that between the time you're told there are seats available and when you actually get finished entering your contact and payment info, they will be gone. This has happened to us in the past, just looking for normal flights to a normal destination on a normal day; gone by 9:03am.
People in the know have a travel agency use their special computer to get the tickets at 9am, knowing that by 9:01 they'll be gone. By the time I checked (with much help from my friend Shimada-san) last winter, every travel agency had a waiting list to try to get tickets, with the somber realization that they'd be lucky to get a ticket for just the first person on the list. It was a total waste of time unless you counted on being very, very lucky, in which case you'd do better to play the lottery.
It's even worse than that, though. Yes, there are a huge number of people vying for only a few seats, but even those few seats might not be available, as government agencies and pseudo-government agencies like NHK (national TV channel) will likely appropriate many of the seats.... at least those that the airline doesn't hold back for itself. There well may have been zero seats available.
Okay, so what about by boat? Here's the kicker: boat/ferry tickets don't go on sale until 9am, one month prior to departure. I should interject that there's no law or requirement that it be this completely moronic; it's just Japanese convention. The Way It Is. The very knowledgeable travel agent I spoke at length with said that the huge overflow of those unable to get flights would all line up again in a month to try to get ferry tickets, and that she'd be happy to try to get one on my behalf (she'd have to call the ferry company just like I would), but that chances were exceedingly slim.
As I sat in her office, the totally asinine nature of this system seemed so apparent, not just for special things like this eclipse, but for everyday travel. The Japanese holiday system groups most people's travel into two times: Golden Week in early May, and Obon at the end of August. (And, to a lesser extent, during the New Year's holidays). If you have a normal job your vacation travel is limited to those times, along with the rest of the population, but you can't make any definitive plans until one or two months ahead of time, and if you can't do it then, you're left scrambling. At least much of the population's needs are served well by the shinkansen (bullet trains) which can carry thousands of passengers each, and during peak times depart every five or ten minutes. (Despite the volume of people they can move, they're still often sold out, but in this case, the worse is that you move your travel half a day one way or the other, to a less-peak time.)
I asked the travel agent “Isn't this really inconvenient for everyone involved?” and she readily agreed, showing empathy to my predicament, but it was in some way as if I had asked “Isn't it inconvenient that the tide keeps moving the shoreline back and forth?”. She didn't like the situation, of course, but had no angst about it (at least not anymore, or that that she showed) because It's The Way It Is and she can't do a single thing about it. There's no use getting angry because you can't hold back the tide or move a mountain. It Is What It Is.
The situation may be old hat to her, but it's fresh to me.... just ridiculous... infuriating... disgusting.
Maybe I should have played the lottery. Maybe I should have actually tried to get a flight or ferry. Maybe I should have coughed up the $4,000 to an exclusive private boat tour that would stop at the aforementioned uninhabited postage-stamp islands for eclipse viewing. But I didn't. This slice of Japanese culture so defeated me... so disgusted me... that I lost my will to even bother.
Here's the uncropped view of the photo above:
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm — 1/160 sec, f/5, ISO 6400 — full exif
Watching the Eclipse on NHK
in Kyoto, at my in-laws', 400 miles from the path of totality
The aqua label on the screen says “Broadcast Live from Iwo-Jima”. In eastern Kyoto, I was 782 miles away.
My area of Kyoto got about 80.8% totality, which perhaps sounds like a lot, but you could have been outside all day and you wouldn't have noticed it unless you knew to look for it. It did get a bit darker, but with the overcast, it was decidedly of the “looks like a storm's coming” type.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — 1/2500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — full exif
Kyoto at Maximum Eclipse
thunderstorms the other day darkened the sky more than this
Some parts of the sky were less gloomy than others, and for a bit, I could look straight up and see the shape of the sun through the clouds. The clouds made for great eye protection, so I could just look directly.
These pictures make the clouds look really freaky, but they weren't. They were just normal, bland overcast. And I'm joking about “great eye protection” – it was probably pretty stupid to look as we did, risking a sudden parting of the clouds.
Watching news reports later in the day, it seems that Yakushima was totally rained out. A friend in Amami told me that it was completely clouded over during totality.
One report from an island whose name I didn't catch showed fast-moving wispy clouds, but mostly you could see things, and the reporter was awestruck. Just offshore was a cruise ship with many hundreds of people that had apparently intended to dock to allow the passengers to experience the eclipse from land (something I'd certainly want to do in preference to a boat, but it'd be especially important to anyone hoping to take pictures), but it couldn't due to the choppy seas, so just sat out there, pitching in the waves.
So all in all it was a pretty big bust. I guess I'm glad that I didn't waste thousands of dollars going to Yakushima or Amami, but frankly, I don't feel the better for it. I was well aware of the likelihood of cloud cover and was more than willing to take my chances, and I would much prefer a washout than the total disgust I have with this travel slice of Japanese culture.
Maybe I'll have better luck next time. In three years there will be an annular eclipse – one where the moon is just a touch too far away to fully obscure the sun, so you're left with a ring of sun instead of totality – that will be just visible from my place in Kyoto. if I were another few miles north, I'd miss it. (It'll also be visible from a large swath of the western United States, including Reno and Albuquerque.)
At my house in Kyoto the eclipse will be fully annular, but the ring around the sun will still leave about 6% of the disk visible (put another way, 94% totality), which is still really really bright, and as such you can't look directly without ample eye protection (such as an overcast day like today!). An annular eclipse is phenomenally less interesting than a total solar eclipse, but you take what you can get: when it comes to nature, there's no sense getting upset, because That's The Way It Is.
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In what is almost certainly the most ridiculous thing I have ever done in my entire life, I've created an export-to-Photobucket plugin for Adobe Lightroom.
I fully understand that the intersection of Photobucket users with Lightroom users is exactly the empty set, but Photobucket's API is well documented and they use a kind of authentication that I wanted to test. So there it is.
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#7 in a series on our visit to KidZania in Nishinomiya, Japan. Anthony's day so far: gas-station attendant, banking, construction, driver's ed, and journalism. Next it was time for a bit of flight training.
Kidzania's flight-training area also had a plane mockup for flight-attendant training, as well as for kids to take part as customers, giving the flight attendants people to train with...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — 1/250 sec, f/3.5, ISO 5000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Flight School
Anthony was interested in pilot training. That area of the “school” had six mock cockpits, so 12 kids could “train” at once...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/160 sec, f/3.5, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Cockpit Simulator
with pilot hats waiting for kids
When it was time for a new group, the kids got flight jackets and the hair nets, but didn't get to put on the hats until after a minute or two of basic instruction.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 5600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ground School
Then it was time for some on-the-job flight training in a jumbo jet. Upon push back from the gate, they waved goodbye to the ground staff that apparently appeared on the video monitors of the flight simulator...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — 1/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Gate-Push-back Salutation
Then it was time to take off and fly....
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 82 mm — 1/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Concentration
As they flew, computer-generated rings of dots floated in air, which provided targets for the kids to aim at and fly through. You can sort of see one in the left-hand monitor of this next shot. (Since adults weren't allowed in the training area, and the lighting was totally ridiculous, it was a difficult stretch to get a reasonable picture.)
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 150 mm — 1/250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Mid-Flight Maneuvers
Landing was on autopilot (they were still not totally experienced pilots, you know)....
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — 1/250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Landing
the red text on the screen says “auto-pilot engaged”
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — 1/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Thumbs Up to the Flight-School Photographer
We later picked up the $10 copy of the photo they took, and it's not much better than the one above, except that it doesn't have the photographer and other kid in it. 🙂
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The last day of Anthony's school before breaking for the summer — the Japanese school year starts in April, so summer break is during the middle of a grade — included a sleepover for all the first graders, right at the school. I went to pick him up at the appointed time on Sunday, but he ended up playing with some friends for a while.
First we piled the kids into some cars and headed over to a nearby river play spot, one that Anthony played at last year. This year, though, he wasn't really in the mood to play in the water (which totally shocked me), but he amused himself taking pictures with the phone he carries during his school commute (as described here).....
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 34 mm — 1/125 sec, f/3.2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Documenting the Day
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm — 1/125 sec, f/5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Getting The Angle
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm — 1/125 sec, f/5, ISO 360 — map & image data — nearby photos
Chimping
Eventually he remembered that he had some sandals in his sleepover-school stuff, and decided to wade in a bit.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 45 mm — 1/125 sec, f/6.3, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Getting His Feet Wet
( so to speak )
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/125 sec, f/4, ISO 220 — map & image data — nearby photos
Bit Deeper
Of course, he ended up getting all wet.
Eventually we ended up heading to Mizuki-chan's house, along with Akiko-chan and Kana-chan.
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/800 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Chased
by Kana and Mizuki
(They were playing on a dead-end street with no traffic, but still, I wish they would have had a helmet.)
I stepped away for a bit to take some picture of a nearby rice field, and came back to witness the end of Kana-chan's first ever bike ride...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 44 mm — 1/1250 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Glow of Excitement
upon completing her first bike ride all by herself
As I clarified that she'd never ridden a “big” bike without training wheels, Anthony was more than happy to claim credit for just having taught her to ride. She gleefully then proceeded to do it again... (I guess once you learn, after that, it's like riding a bike)...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm — 1/3200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Second Ride, Like a Pro
as I run along and try to get a shot
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 66 mm — 1/2500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
U-Turn And Again
I eventually suggested that they return to the house to get a helmet, at which point everyone retreated inside for cool drinks and inside play.
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In my post the other day about flowers lining a lane on Taketomi Island (a tiny, culturally-unique island far south of Japan), I asked about the color of the flowers. No one got it right until I gave a hint, that being a botanist might help. Then a botanist got it right.
Here are some close-ups...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 32 mm — 1/500 sec, f/4, ISO 200 — full exif
Lots of Scarlet Red Leaves, Surrounding...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — full exif
....Pretty White Flowers
Hopefully, regex.info's resident botanist will offer some, er, color commentary on these little friends in the comment section of the post.
That's not the only botanical surprise we found in the coral walls. We often found plants growing from them, apparently like a weed, as seen here in a photo that six-year-old Anthony took with a cell-phone camera:
Photo by Anthony Friedl
The coral stones and plant are mostly achromatic, made more so in Anthony's picture by the low quality of the cell-phone camera. Still, it represents well how they looked... like long-dead, long-dried remnants of some previously-thriving plant. As such, we didn't even really notice them for much of the day.....
So it was with considerable surprise that when I finally paid close attention to one and noticed a bit of color, then touched one, and found that they're quite living: soft, supple, with a bit of bulk and bounce...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 62 mm — 1/200 sec, f/7.1, ISO 400 — full exif
Reports of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated
