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.
On the first day of our trip to Ishigaki Island (southern Japan), between our arrival and stopping for the sunset, we drove around on the island a bit. Driving on a pretty rough road that I thought took us to the top of a mountain, it turns out that it eventually just petered out into nothing (where “nothing” is defined as “dense, unpenetrable mountain forest”).
But before retreating all the way, I stopped to take a picture of a huge fern. I should have taken something to show the scale, but the width of the whole thing, seen in the middle picture, was probably about five feet...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 36 mm — 1/125 sec, f/3.2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — 1/200 sec, f/3.2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/160 sec, f/3.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
It's hard to get a pretty picture of a fern, but that doesn't stop me from trying.
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 @ 200 mm — 1/4000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sunset Over The East China Sea
from Oganzaki, on Ishigaki Island, in the far southern reaches of Japan
After arriving to Ishigaki Island on the first day of our short Golden-Week vacation, we puttered around the island a bit, and ended up at Oganzaki (御神崎) in the north-west corner of the island. In checking photos on Google Earth prior to the visit, it seemed like it should provide a nice sunset, and when I mentioned it to Fumie, she said she'd had it on her list as well, from reading the guidebooks.
It's not much more than a small lighthouse and a small park...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — 1/2000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lighthouse
and a small speck of a moon
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — 1/3200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Small Park Area
as seen from the Lighthouse
Beyond the park area the adventurous can take paths out onto the rocks and boulders of old coral...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 60 mm — 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
That's a Lotsa' Water
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 110 mm — 1/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
I'm a Sucker for These Kind of Pensive Shots
Of course, when faced with the unimaginable grandeur of the ocean amidst the stunning beauty of nature, Anthony does....
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 130 mm — 1/1250 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Dinosaur Play
A kind of play described here and here
He eventually made his way down to where he could see over a cliff, down into a rocky intertidal zone at low tide...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 95 mm — 1/640 sec, f/10, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lotsa' Rock
and lots of wind
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/640 sec, f/5.6, ISO 280 — map & image data — nearby photos
View Back Up Toward the Lighthouse
the path is up toward the right, out of frame, with the little park about halfway there
We made our way back to where Fumie was sitting. The small crowd that had gathered for the sunset was all congregating at the little park, which seemed the natural place to see the sunset from, but we thought it'd be more interesting to sit back and include the people in our foreground, so we picked a spot on the sloping grass near the steps up to the lighthouse...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/640 sec, f/5, ISO 220 — map & image data — nearby photos
Our Vantage Point
for the sunset
But the sun wasn't setting quite yet, so Anthony was off to play more...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 110 mm — 1/640 sec, f/10, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Flying in the Wind
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 78 mm — 1/640 sec, f/4.5, ISO 3200 — map & image data — nearby photos
“No Entry”
Why is there a path leading here?
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 170 mm — 1/640 sec, f/4.5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Heading Back to Mommy
as the sun turns golden
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/8000 sec, f/4.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Back at our Vantage Spot
20 minutes before sunset
The sunset was pretty lackluster, but a zoom lens can make the most of what color is there. The lead photo in this post focused on the people in silhouette. Here's a similar shot that focuses on the water...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm — 1/3200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 38 mm — 1/640 sec, f/3.5, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos
Anticlimactic Finish
The sun eventually dipped into some clouds on the horizon, and the crowd quickly left. As regular readers of my blog know, I've spent some time hunting down a nice sunset in Kyoto (you'll find some of the better results on this page), so even though the weather today had given us a fairly bland sunset, I knew that you could still get some fireworks of color long after.
Indeed, 10 minutes later the sun had dipped far enough down to light the foreground clouds from below, with a deeply rich red that made the clouds seem on fire...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/400 sec, f/7.1, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Final Sparks
Heading to the car, I turned to snap a picture of the lighthouse, now getting an early start on the evening's chores...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 170 mm — 1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lonely Lighthouse
Oganzaki, Ishigaki City, Okinawa Japan
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 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/125 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
“The rough tea is easily boiled”
I mentioned in my previous post that our hotel on Ishigaki Island in the far south of Japan had only “okay” food. However, their food sometimes offered me, as an English speaker, a bit of extra entertainment.
The label above was on one of the items in the breakfast buffet. I redacted out the name of the dish in Japanese. Can you guess what the original Japanese was?
Here are two hints:
- It was clear from my overall experience at the hotel that they used machine translation (that is, computer non-human translation) for their menus. One menu had “Popsicle” as the translation for what should have been “Pepsi-Cola”.
- I understood the Japanese just as little as the English.
( Getting shots like this are why I bring my camera most everywhere 🙂 )
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.
It's been several days since we got back from Ishigaki Island, in the far south of Japan, but I've still not had a chance to even look at most of my photos. Just. Too. Busy. But here are a few to illustrate the trip down...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — 1/100 sec, f/5.6, ISO 4000 — map & image data — nearby photos
First Flight Was Mostly Empty
1.75 hours, from Osaka/Itami to Naha/Okinawa
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — 1/100 sec, f/5.6, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Having Gotten Up at 4:45AM
I Took The Opportunity to Snooze
( I did snooze for a while, but this photo is staged; photo by Anthony Friedl )
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/1600 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Central Okinawaian Mainland
15 minutes out of Naha
The Okinawa mainland is an island about 80 miles long, but Okinawa is actually a string of what must be thousands of islands that stretches in an arc for about 450 miles. In the photo above, we're about 40 miles north of the main airport, which is at the extreme southern end of the island. The red circle marks the Atta Terrace hotel where we stayed for a few days in January (posts about which are in my blog's Okinawa category).
Just before landing in Naha for our transfer to a second flight, I spied a small island about 1km off the mainland coast...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Little Beach
On the approach path to Naha Airport, Okinawa Japan
The beach area is about 150 yards across, and face the Okinawaian mainland a kilometer away. The white speck toward the lower left is a small boat with one person.
Our destination island, Ishigaki Island, is quite a bit larger, and quiet a bit further south. After switching to a smaller plane and a 45-minute flight further south-west, we ended up at Ishigaki Island, over 1,000 miles from home and just 140 miles shy of Taiwan....
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/250 sec, f/10, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Flying into Ishigaki, Japan
( red arrow just left of center points to the general vicinity of our hotel, on the opposite-facing coast )
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — 1/640 sec, f/9, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Strolling Through the Fusaki Resort Village
Ishigaki Island, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan
We stayed at the Fusaki Resort Village which has a bunch of small private cottages, and some smaller, less-expensive duplex-style rooms (we stayed in the latter).
A hotel might use the word “resort” for any number of different reasons:
- location — amazing paradise location
- quality — accommodations of the highest possible quality
- food — world-class food of uncompromising standards
- service — ultra-attentive (yet not snobby) service
- high prices — outrageously high prices
Last year's visit to Four Seasons Resort in Whistler, Canada touched on quality and high prices. This winter's stay at the Atta Terrace, Okinawa involved that, plus great food.
This trip's “resort” involved only service... really great service. The cost of the entire trip (airfare, hotel, rent-a-car) was ridiculously low due to a great deal that Fumie found online. The food at the resort's four restaurants ranged from “almost good” (breakfast buffet) to “good” (everything else). The location was great, but not a paradise. The room was clean, mostly. It was infinitely better, that's for sure, than the Sheraton Suites Hotel, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, the worst hotel on earth, that we had the misfortune of staying at a few years ago.
After dumping our luggage in our room, we made our way to the open-air beach-side grill for lunch. It turns out that they had just closed five minutes earlier, but (here's that great service) they seated us anyway. We were the only ones there. They have a stage for dinner shows, and so while we waited, Anthony took to the stage to show off his dance moves...
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — 1/800 sec, f/9, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Playing To An (Almost) Empty House
of adoring fans
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — 1/2000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
View From The Restaurant
it's obscured by the foliage, but there's a very pleasant beach down there.
I've been so busy since coming back that I haven't even finished plowing through my waiting email queue, and have barely had time to look at the photos. I seem to be coming down with a cold, which doesn't bode well for the followup posts I have in mind. We'll see...
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.
The Adventures of Craneman #1
Written and Illustrated by Anthony Friedl
Anthony spent much of the flights back from Ishigaki yesterday looking through a catalog of toys and costumes that Grandma had included in a recent package. Anthony loves toy catalogs, just to check things out and to practice saying “I want this!”.
The particular catalog yesterday had lots of costumes, including about every superhero and villain in western culture, and he was quite interested in who among them were good and who was bad. Superman: good. The Joker: bad. Some, like Iron Man, I just didn't know because I don't know those stories.
This morning he was still interested in those stories, so I told them about comic books and how someone would make up a story and write them, usually centering around a good superhero, who then faces a variety of bad villains.
I told him that he could make up his own stories if he wanted, and gave a silly example that if he wanted to make a story about bread that was a superhero, he could call it anpanman. Anpanman is just that, a very popular superhero among Japanese kids, made of bread, who gives of himself to help the hungry. (He appeared in my blog just the other day, and also some time ago here.) My idea in giving this example was to at first make it sound too silly to be possible (“superhero bread”), then reveal that it's something he already knows well, thereby showing that the seemingly impossible can be made possible if you just do it.
I then made up another example.... about a superhero... (thinking fast.... gotta' think of something silly) crane man who uses his winch to help good people and “get” bad people. He liked this idea a lot, immediately launching into a long story about how craneman was born, and how he grew up, etc. He was very animated.
He's never seen a western-style comic book, but I described one and encouraged him to make his own, and this was the result....
Here's his story, in his own words...
A Boy Dances Near a River
As He Was Dancing, He Fell Into The Water
Then The Crane Came And Picked That Boy Up
and swung him into his house
The Crane Put Him Into The Chair
and there was food and he ate it
(but that time he didn't have eyes and his hair and his mouth)
Then The Crane Did Bring Him Into the Bath
(and that time his mouth was moved to his neck)
Then The Crane Did Bring Him Into the Bed
and he slept
(but that time he had two mouths, and he snored very loudly)
(then every single person except him on earth did hear it very loudly)
その男の子以外の地球のみんなに聞こえました。
“ The End ”
That's as it was when he first showed me. Knowing that this would be an important part of the world's legacy, I asked him to write his name, so he added...
“ Anthony ”
After working with him to write the English captions, I said “all done!”, and he was shocked because “people in Japan can't read it... it's only English!”. He wanted to show everyone in Japan his story (I think he's thinking of his school friends), so we went through and added the Japanese as well. We brought in Fumie to make sure that my kanji selection were correct, and now it's ready for publication.
His illustration of the crane picking up the boy and swinging into the house is, to me, amazing. It shows complex movement over time in a single, static image. I don't think I could have done as well.
He added comments about the boy not having eyes and hair and mouth as we were adding the text – they weren't in the original story as he told me after drawing the thing – because I don't think he realized that he'd forgotten them until reviewing these scans on my computer. I think he was a bit embarrassed about the oversight, so worked it into his story. Already using spin to turn a “bug” into a “feature”... at age six, he's ready to work for Microsoft! 😉