It's been a busy week. As I mentioned in my previous post, we took a weekend trip to Aomori in the far north of Japan's main island, and on the way home I came down with a cold. I'm finally feeling better today.

While driving around the mountainous coast of the far northwest corner of Japan's main island, I came across a tree full of beautiful Japanese camellia (otometsubaki · 乙女椿). They're not difficult to find, but pristine examples within easy reach and not molested by wind are a bit more difficult. I've gotten decent photos on only one other occasion, mentioned in “An Amazing Day of Photography at Some Eastern-Kyoto Temples” and in a followup some time later.

I haven't gone through the photos from the Aomori trip yet, but this one caught my eye while loading them into Lightroom. Maybe the bokeh isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I like this kind of shot so much (the sharp edge of the petals diffusing away into a milky blur) that I lead my blog post about the lens that took it with a similar shot taken that first time I got nice photos of a camellia.

The flower is remarkably beautiful in a Disney princess kind of way, but this shot is dark and brooding because it's underexposed, because I was stuck trying a new kind of lens CPU that gives the same wildly-erratic exposure problems that the first kind of lens CPU that I tired gave me. Sigh.

Anyway, I set the proper white balance, and applied the slight crop needed to make this desktop-background version, and here we go. Otherwise, it's just as imported into Lightroom.

I have a bazillion other photos of the same flower, so I'm sure at least a couple more will find there way to my blog sooner or later.

We're on a short family trip to Hirosaki (弘前) at the northern end of the main Japanese island of Honshu. It's cold enough up here that their cherry blossoms are three or four weeks later than in Kyoto, and are now at their peak. There's also snow still on the ground in some shaded areas, despite being well into the 70s (~25C).

Our hotel is the Best Western Hotel Newcity Hirosaki, and I don't recommend it if moronic policies bother you. It's hot and muggy, but the room “air conditioner” works only as a heater until May 1st, after which it will work only as a cooler. These dates are set in stone in their policy, despite the fact that Mother Nature almost certainly has not gotten the memo.

True, it's unusually hot for this time of year; on a normal year, you'll be toasty until May 1st after which you freeze until spring catches up. The normal year is as imbecilic as this, just in the reverse order.

It mirrors a particular Japanese fetish with the changing seasons whereby uniforms (worn by school children, factory workers, etc.) switch from the winter version to the summer version on April 1st, regardless of the actual weather. There are many things that I love about Japan, but mindless stupidity is not among them.

When I called the front desk of the Best Western to ask about how to get the cooler running, the lady suggested that I open the window. I wasn't looking forward to bugs flying in on a hot muggy night, so I asked to borrow a room fan. They didn't have any.

Sigh. So, I opened the window and was greeted to nonstop pop music blasting from low-quality outside speakers at a game center across the street. The music likely can't be heard inside... its only purpose, it seems, is ostensibly to attract folks who want to enter a gaming establishment through a gauntlet of low-fidelity pop music. Maddening.

It's almost 10pm. I hope they shut it off soon.

入学式から帰って来た疲れた息子をヘルパーに使わせていただきました。

Setting up a bunch of flash units in the living room to take pictures of Fumie in her costume for her recent part in her ballet school's production of The Nutcracker, I asked Anthony to step in so that I could take a test shot to gauge the initial flash settings I'd guessed at. He'd just come home from a short day at school and wanted to relax with his ice-cream snack, so he wasn't really in the mood to be a prop.

I was happy that I'd at least landed in the ballpark for the settings (they were a bit hot), but this kind of slightly washed out “high key” look, combined with his ice cream and his general look, make this look like it could be an advertisement for the clothes he was wearing.

He was wearing sort of nicer clothes in honor of the special ceremony for the new batch of first graders starting school that day, a very big event in their life, as it was for Anthony five years ago when Anthony started school. On this special day, only the sixth graders attend (2nd through 5th have a day off) to welcome the new kids, and while some of the sixth graders get special helping tasks, for the most part the sixth graders just wait around on their feet, so he was pretty tired by the time he got home.

After day 1 of our weekend trip to Shirahama Japan we debated on what to do for the second day before making the three-hour drive home to Kyoto that evening. The area is known for having pandas, but I'm not a big fan of zoos so I didn't really want to go. (I've lived a 5-minute walk from the Kyoto City Zoo for 10 years, and have been only twice.) But Anthony wanted to see the pandas, so off to “Adventure World” we went.

Upon walking in it was clear it wasn't a normal zoo, with the entrance hall being highly evocative of Tokyo Disneyland, but the penguins quickly made it apparent that it was more than a normal amusement park:

There were various colorful birds like cockatoos on trees inside without any kind of barrier or restraint (except clipped wings, I suppose), so it felt like you were very much “with” them, as opposed to looking in at them from behind a fence. This was the theme for much of the wildlife at Adventure World, and we loved it.

Like everywhere in Shirahama, they played up the whole “panda” thing...

Of course, what sets this place apart from everywhere else is that they have real pandas as well, but we'd not come across them yet.

We next came across some penned animals like camels, horses, sheep, llama, and in this next pic, a pair of alpaca...

Even these penned animals were more approachable than in a zoo (you could touch them if you had the guts to get spit on or bitten). Basically, rather than fences and cages, this place maintained human and animal safety by allowing nature's own sense of self preservation to work.

The only disappointment was an American Bald Eagle in a fenced in area the size of a small bathroom, with no room for anything resembling flight. I can only hope they let him out from time to time to spread his wings.

We eventually came to the rides area, which we were disappointed cost an extra $20/person on top of the $50/per we'd already paid. But let me tell you we got our money's worth, because a light sprinkle kept the crowds away, and we never had to wait for a ride. Ever.

Anthony was most interested in the little carts one could drive:

Once I'd taken him around in the two-seater, he was ready to try one all by himself.

He's always loved these kinds of things (such as when he was six and again when he was seven), but this was the first time he had total control all by himself.

Unlike the one at Disneyland, these had no rails... you just drove and hopefully kept it on the road, and hopefully didn't go backward, etc. They didn't go all too fast, but fast enough that on the wet pavement with a bit of skill you could do a power skid to a full 90-degree right angle. 🙂

Normally if you wanted to make another run you'd have to get in line and wait, but there was no line. Ever. We did it 10+ times.

Here's a scene of other folks in the carts that I took later, just to give some context...

All but the biggest roller coaster were closed for the rain, but the biggest one was open so I went. The light rain stung my eyes a bit, but it wasn't too bad, nor too scary. Anthony was reluctant, but I finally convinced him to go. He survived, but once was enough for him.

There was a large area with lots of free-ranging fowl of various types...

Thanks to a comment by Mike Pedde on Google Plus, I now know that these are Gray Crowned Cranes from Africa (アフリカのホオジロカンムリヅル).

In the photo above, the bird's head is at a slightly-different angle than in this picture that I posted the other day, but the visual impact of that slight change is huge, creating quite the menacing look. It was a look that wasn't actually there, but instead was created by the camera as it froze a passing moment as the bird moved his head lazily, paying not much attention to me but perhaps showing a bit of curiosity about the camera for a few moments.

Later we had the luck to come across the hippo during his daily feeding, where we could throw pingpong-sized grass pellets into his well-trained mouth....

The amount of blubber in and around his mouth was substantial, perhaps exceeded only by the vast amount of saliva and goo, as the lead photo of this post might hint. The young couple in upscale dress who fed him right after me got somewhat of a goo/saliva shower as he rather actively slobbered down the grass pellet. I was lucky to have dogged that bullet.

He seemed jolly and docile, so I was surprised to read on Wikipedia that hippos can be very aggressive, and they can run extremely fast (and could easily beat Usain Bolt in a 100m race).

And finally, there were pandas. This one was totally enjoying a bamboo snack...

This guy was spralled on his back enjoying his bamboo snack, peeling off its outside layer and crunching on the pithy inside. When he was done with one stalk, he'd reach over for another like an armchair quarterback making the effort to reach for another beer. Touchdown.

The rain had picked up a bit by this time. We had him to ourselves.

Pandas are, of course, bears with big teeth and claws, so this was one of the only places where you were physically kept separate from the animal, and the animal from you. With the hippo, for example, it was only your own sense of disgust and desire to retain your arm that kept you from thrusting it down the hippos throat. You could ride on the elephant, and pluck a peacock's feathers. It was much nicer than a zoo. (Monkeys were also separated, as well as the aforementioned eagle.)

The exit was, of course, through the giftshop.

I'd posted a B&W version of this shot here, but something doesn't seem quite right about it. When I took the shot I had B&W in my mind as obvious, due to the panda faces of course, but it feels forced. This color one feels better. (I think he looks cute, of course, but Fumie is less enamored with this shot than I.)

It was a surprisingly fun day. Three hours later we were home.

この間、週末の旅行でパンダが多い白浜(和歌山県)に行きました。

As I mentioned the other day, we took a short weekend trip to Shirahama (白浜), in Wakayama Prefecture a three-hour drive south from Kyoto. We left on Friday after Anthony got home from school, so arrived late in the evening, giving us all of Saturday and most of Sunday to enjoy the area.

We had a nice hybrid Western/Japanese room at Hotel Laforet....

The area is known for its small white-sand beach, and for having pandas (in what I assumed was a zoo, but as we'll see in a later post, the pandas are at an amusement/nature park). It was cute to see panda paraphernalia everywhere, starting with the lobby of the hotel on Saturday morning.

What we didn't see were other customers. The hotel was 11 floors, but on Saturday morning the place seemed deserted; we didn't see anyone except a few staff. It was eerie.

(It turns out that it filled up quickly later in the day, after thecheck-in time.)

Our first order of business in the morning was to stroll down to the beach, which is actually named Shirarahama (白良浜, literally “white good beach”), though the town it's located in is named Shirahama (白浜, literally “white beach”).

The last time I was at this beach was 20+ years ago, when I spent a weekend with a metal detector scooping up 500-yen ($5) coins. During the morning it was as empty as seen in these photos, but during the day during the summer it was a solid carpet of people.

For lunch we stopped by a place for sushi that Fumie had seen in a guidebook.

It was lucky that I didn't realize at first that this was a real sushi place, meaning pretty expensive. I'd asked Fumie to order for us all, so I didn't realize at first that no prices were displayed anywhere, but when we got our first sushi the taste told me that this was a really high-quality place, so I steeled myself for the bill.

It turns out to have been about $100 for the three of us, which is certainly pricey for a lunch(!), but I suppose it's much less than something comparable would have been in Kyoto. I think it was my first time at such a high-class sushi place. It was delicious, especially early on when I didn't think about the price. 🙂

After lunch we made a short drive to a seaside place called Senjojiki (千畳敷), a name that means something along the lines of “spread out over a bazillion room's worth of area”. It turns out to have been an amazing area of many different kinds of rock formations all in one much-smaller-than-a-bazillion compact area...

The modern world, both in Japan and America, seems to have gotten so regulated and controlled so as to remove even the slightest risk of injury or of having fun, lest, I suppose, someone sue. So it was refreshing that at this place there were no guardrails, no ropes, no handrails, no “don't have fun” signs. You were responsible for yourself, and if you did something stupid you would likely die or maim yourself. I'm a big believer that personal responsibility should be personal, so I really enjoyed the freedom to explore to the limits of my own sense of responsibility. We lived.

In some areas the rocks were very stratified into highly distinct layers. I seem to have been unable to capture it in a photo well, but you can sort of see a bit in the next photo, where a thin layer of gravel-strewn rock runs near the top of the frame:

Some layers were just a few inches thick, some a foot thick, but the passage of time was clear and the abrupt changes in composition brought to mind cataclysmic events (volcanoes, tidal waves, earthquakes, etc.). One thing I never did notice in the 50+ meters of vertical layers were shells, so I guessed that this area had never been below sea level.

Above the tidal line were “bowls” encrusted with a thick layer of salt. I'm guessing that sea water is blown in infrequently during storms, then evaporates and leaves the salt behind.

Yet just a few seconds away...

We really enjoyed the area, and it was the highlight of the day.

We then took a leisurely drive along the coast without much of a destination, but at some point I noticed on the car navigation system that a kilometer or so inland was a “Kinkakuji Temple” (金閣寺). The famous “Golden Pavilion” temple in Kyoto has that name, so I thought it'd be interesting to see what this temple with the same name looked like.

Unfortunately, it was closed for some kind of construction. It seemed deserted.

The Kongorikishi guardians flanking the entrance (described here) were wood-relief carvings instead of statutes carved from wood. I'd never seen that before. Too bad it was closed... the map showed lakes and such inside.

We continued our drive and ended up at a big orange something sticking out of the mountain, something we'd seen and wondered about from the hotel...

It turns out that it's to support landing lights for the local airport, which seems to have been carved out of the mountains:

The hotel had a ping-pong table we could rent, which Anthony was excited to try...

I couldn't let him get too full of himself, so of course I had to crush him with a powerful slam from time to time. Proper parenting, you know. 😉

The hotel has huge onsen baths on the 11th floor, separated by gender, but you could rent a private “family bath” for 50 minutes, which we did...

We'd scheduled it for sunset hoping for a nice display, but it was overcast so sunset was entirely uneventful. But the bath was nice.

For dinner we ate in the overpriced-but-surprisingly-tasty hotel restaurant, and went to bed early so as to be fresh for Day Two.

Continued here...