As we have done in the past, we started our Christmas by taking in the free Christmas-Eve concert in the lobby of the Kyoto Hotel Okura, our fourth year in a row (having done it in 2006, 2005, and 2004). Fumie's dad is in Malaysia at the moment, so her mom joined us as well.
Prior to the concert, the hotel passes out free champaign and juice....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/90 sec, f/1.4, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sharp-Dressed Elf
Then there's the concert. This time was a very nice choir of about 50 kids, but unfortunately, they brought their families so even though we got there very early, there wasn't a chair to be had anywhere.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/45 sec, f/2.8, ISO 3200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sold Out
Later, we asked one of the hotel staff to take our picture, but the quality of the result reflected its low price...
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/60 sec, f/1.4, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Fuzzy Christmas Eve
We brought home a huge roast-beef meal from the hotel kitchen. It was excellent, but the star were the au gratin potatoes. I've had some excellent au gratin potatoes in my life, but sorry Mom, these were by far the best. If you ever get a chance to visit Kyoto's Hotel Okura, try the au gratin potatoes.
Efficient Use of Land
Driving today on a road in Kyoto today that I've driven many times in the past (the road I reddened above, traveling from the upper right to the lower left), I was surprised to notice for the first time that there's a building right in the middle of an interchange cloverleaf.
Quite efficient, if not a bit unpleasant for the occupants of the building.
When viewing a geoencoded photo – one where the location's latitude and longitude are encoded in the metadata – in Lightroom, its coordinates are displayed in the metadata panel as shown below:
GPS Coordinates in Lightroom's Metadata Viewer
(Well, it shows up if you're using a metadata-panel view that includes the coordinates among the items to be shown, such as “all”, but you can also use my Lightroom Metadata Viewer Preset Builder to build a customized metadata-panel view.)
Clicking on the little arrow to the right of the coordinates brings up your web browser, with the location showing in Google Maps. In the case of the example above, it brings up this page at Google, where you can see that the location is Osaka Castle Park, Osaka Japan, from this photoshoot.
Google Maps is a wonderful service that I and many have enjoyed for years, which is why I include not only this kind of link to Google Maps in my online exif viewer for appropriate images, but also an embedded Google Maps pane. You can see it in action here, showing the data for image used in the screenshot above. Most photos that I post are geoencoded, and you can get the same exif-viewer page by following the “map & image data” link under most photos.
Anyway, the point of this post is that I just found out that if you hold down the ALT key (PC) or Option key (Mac) while clicking, it'll bring up the location in Yahoo! Maps instead. This is most excellent!
Google Maps is generally excellent, but there are times when Google Maps are a bit wonky, and sometimes they're just downright freaky compared to Yahoo! Maps.
The location of this map is not one of them, because the US version of Yahoo! Maps has only low-resolution data for Japan (Osaka Park in Yahoo! Maps). However, for many locations on Earth, Yahoo! Maps is at least comparable (but different, which is good), or better, so it's great having two views. As I mention at the bottom of this post, Google Maps doesn't even mark Mexico City, one of the world's largest cities, but Yahoo! Maps has very nice high-resolution satellite imagery.
I was really tickled to find out about the Yahoo!-Maps option in Lightroom, so I wanted to share it.
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 — 1/60 sec, f/4, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Seen Better Times
I noticed a tiny old house being demolished nearby the other day, and stopped in for a look. It could be anywhere from 40 to 100+ years old... the guys tearing it down didn't know, but it was built at a time when Japanese homes were still built with mud and bamboo for the walls.
There are still plenty of this kind of construction in Kyoto. Often, the outside of such walls are veneered in wood, as seen in my Randomly Photographed Stroll in Kyoto and Old Wood-Veneer Siding (Desktop Background) posts.
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 — 1/45 sec, f/1.4, ISO 2000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Half-Exposed Bamboo Lattice
The shot above shows rough-hewn beams that were used for most of the major structural work, which were above the ceiling line before the demo crew took the ceiling out. The bamboo lattice is in the center of the wall, with the dried mud that had been on the inside having been removed with the ceiling.
The internal walls were also mud and bamboo...
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 — 1/60 sec, f/1.4, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Internal Wall:More Mud and Bamboo
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/60 sec, f/2.8, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
The total land area of the property was very small – perhaps enough to park four cars on comfortably – yet even with such a lack of space, a fair portion was still dedicated to a small garden. I think that says an enormous amount about how important nature is in Japanese culture. In the garden was this fairly large stone lantern, which stood about to my waist...
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 — 1/160 sec, f/4, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lantern in the Garden
The pieces are not sitting square in the picture above because I took it after having moved them to gauge their weight. I got permission from the demo foreman to take the thing home, but when I came back the next day to get it, I found that the bottom piece – which I thought would be just at the limit of what I could move by myself – was actually extended well into the ground, with less than half sticking out. It was way too heavy for me to move, so sadly, I abandoned it.
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 — 1/250 sec, f/3.2, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Weathered Old Friend
The demo crew said that they'd probably just throw the thing away. It was quite weathered, which made it all the more charming, as far as I was concerned. While I was there, someone I took to be a real-estate agent stopped by, and chatted with the demo crew about the lantern's possible value. It seems that if it was made in Korea, it was old and had no value, but if it had been made in Japan, it was an antique and was worth a lot. No one knew which it was, but considering the low value of the house, one can guess it probably wasn't worth much.
Still, I liked it.
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 — 1/45 sec, f/2, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
All The Modern Amenities
I'm no expert on Japanese architectural anthropology, but it seemed clear that the house was built before electricity was available, as it seems to have been wired after the fact.
The hole hacked in the concrete below to make way for a light switch attests to something.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/15 sec, f/2.8, ISO 3200 — map & image data — nearby photos
At Your Fingertips
It was very dark where I took the picture above. The photo was taken with a long 1/15th of a second exposure, at f/2.8, at ISO 3200. My D200 is not a D300, so an ISO 3200 shot looks, well, like an ISO 3200 shot. What can I say... it was dark, and I didn't have a tripod.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/45 sec, f/2.8, ISO 3200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sad
Driving by again the other day, the lot was cleared and level dirt, and was incredibly, shockingly small. I couldn't imagine that someone could build a house on it, much less one with a fairly sizable (relatively speaking) garden, so there's something to be said for the skill of the designer to make a microscopic three-room house feel merely “really really small”.
Copying an Example · By Himself
This week, Anthony had shown a sudden (but still slight) interest in writing. The other day he wrote his name in Japanese all by himself, so yesterday, I thought I'd see whether he was interested in learning to write it in English. I wrote a sample, and he copied it a few times (the left of the image above), and then we covered all the examples and he gave it a try by himself.
Then we got out a much larger piece of paper, and tried a few more, adding his last name to the mix...
More Practice
Finally, a bit of art from earlier in the week that in one sense is not nearly as advanced as some that he's done lately, but it shows a snapshot of action in a way I've never seen him draw before:
Deka-Ranger “Beaming” a Bad Person
I take it that the “Deka-Ranger” is on the left. I'm not sure what one is, but I believe it's some kind of Power Ranger super hero thing, popular among preschool boys.