The last post was extremely Japanese in nature, so this one will provide a good contrast. Tonight for dinner we went down to the Sausalito Yacht Club for dinner. The place sounds decidedly fancier than it is; dinner was a BBQ out on the deck overlooking San Francisco Bay. It was perfect, though, for precisely that reason.
Genbo looking at the ocean
Me hanging dangerously over railing to get shot of Genbo looking at ocean from ocean's perspective
If this is the Yacht Club, are those the yachts?
Wolfing down obligatory hamburgers and hotdogs
Not at all different from the Japan....really
Looking out towards Alcatraz and San Francisco as the ferry comes in
Interesting boat catching nice light
Priceless expression
Most days it doesn’t matter, except for the ritual greetings to the Shinto gods they perform, but the daycare Genbo and Zoe attend is attached to a major regional shrine, with a history going back to 667 AD to when the area was, briefly, the capital of Japan. The oldest class, however, gets to take part in a yearly ceremony called Miae Matsuri, which is, as close to I can figure, an annual thanksgiving to the gods for the bounty of the harvest, etc. etc.
This festival just happened to fall on the morning of the day we flew back to the States. So, we did the whole ceremony thing, changed really quickly, then hopped on a plane to San Francisco. Which, by the way, is where I’m writing this. So, it doesn’t have the usual custom formatting that I have set up on my home machine.
Genbo was given a place of honor holding a live rooster in a basket, which may or may not have been sacrificed as part of the ceremony we didn’t see. There was one other kid performing the same duty, but he apparently got scared of the thing during practice and had to have someone else take over.
Photo-Op with Mom
Hanging out with friends
Can we go to America now?
Genbo and first friend
The Procession Begins
Up the Stairs
Through the Gate-Portal-Thingy
And Everyone Follows
…To be continued.
I am the proud new owner of a Voigtlander 125 2.5 APO-Lanthar, which is kissing-cousins to my old Zeiss 100/2 Planar Makro, except better. Better because it’s 125 mm instead of 100 (more reach), has native 1:1 macro capability, and is apochromatic and therefore corrects for chromatic and spherical aberations. OK, I’ve just lost 99% of my already-meager readership.
Anyway, I’ve been pleasantly busy with work lately, which means I haven’t been posting, but I just wanted to put up some quick shots with the new lens. These were taken over breakfast this morning. Tomorrow we’re headed for the States for three weeks, so I should be posting from there.
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125/2.5,
Family
On our trip to Kobe last Golden Week we went to a little amusement park on top of a mountain, which will be further explored in an upcoming post. Here I just want to share these shots of Genbo because they’re so precious. Because it was Golden Week and the place was packed, there were live shows all day. The two we took in were a clown show and a Shinkenja (Power-Rangers clone) show. These were of course completely boring for me, but I loved watching Genbo’s face go through all sorts of transformations, from gleeful to intent to semi-scared, and then back to gleeful again.
If only Genbo concentrated so hard when I try to explain something important…
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Pure, unadultureated joyFunny, he doesn’t look like that when I play shakuhachi
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Next came the Shinkenja, which Genbo picked up a thorough knowledge of despite the fact that we never watch these shows at our house. Here they are using the same sword as the one that he received for his fifth birthday, pictured at the end of this post. (Zoe got scared during this show and had to be taken away by mommy, although that didn’t stop her from stating her preference for the pink one.)
Finally, I had to insert one cute shot of Zoe. This one is out in front of the Suma Aquarium.
Here are some pictures from the beach on our Golden Week trip to Kobe, first described here. This was really Zoe’s first exposure to the ocean as a full running, squealing, laughing human being, so it was fun to watch. And, Genbo was as unconsciously graceful in play as all 5 year olds unleashed on the world should be.
This one definitely captures Zoe’s assertive, indomitable style 
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That exhausted but satisfied look of a parent watching their children playing
Yesterday was Zoe’s birthday. Being Wednesday, Maki had the day off, which was nice. We had thought long and hard as to what to get her for a birthday present, and since she is such a tomboy (being interested primarily in trains, Ultraman, and dinosaurs), we decided to give her a doll. Partly out of curiosity; partly desperation. She took to it well enough, which isn’t surprising considering that she does love babies, but I’m still skeptical as to whether or not it can hold up to brachiosaurus (her current favorite) in the long run.
Anyway, when we woke up she was happy to get the doll, but was much more excited about digging into her birthday cake. As it happens, it had been in the refrigerator since the day before. And, we didn’t have anything really good for breakfast anyway. So we threw all parenting norms out the window and had birthday cake for breakfast. Don’t tell anyone or they’ll take away our Wholesome Parents certificate. That is the reason this post is devoid of picturesque candle-lit images and heavy on the just-got-out-of-bed look. I’m glad I was behind the camera instead of in front of it.
Getting ready to blow out the candles(I think Genbo was saying “Not yet. Wait for mommy”)
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For some reason she wanted a snowman cake 
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No petite or polite cake-eating in our house
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For dinner we had ikura over rice (next to birthday cake, her favorite food).
This past Golden Week (the 5-day or so vacation at the beginning of May), we went down to Suma, which is right near Kobe on the coast. I wasn’t feeling particularly good the day we left (allergies or cold, never figured out which), and I was debating whether or not to take the camera at all. I settled on just taking my small little 35/1.8 lens. I’m pretty happy with this, both because it was light and forced me back into the prime lens way of thinking, in which you have only one focal length to frame your shots and must therefore get a little more creative.
These shots are on the train platform on the way there.
Then Genbo…(Looks kind of
special there, doesn’t he? )
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Very impressive, honey……but it’s upside-down
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Showing her current age: 2Definitely NOT the ubiquitous annoying Japanese peace sign. They know we don’t do that.
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Yes, I have a large-aperture lens, and abuse it at will(Last night I dreamt I bought the new $2,200 24/1.4 Nikkor. A good dream…)
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OK, there are still a few blossoms on the cherry trees, so this post is not technically late. I returned to the exact place pictured in the first shot of this post with a mission to take some non-boring sakura pics. Since I wanted to use my new neutral density (ND) filters, however, I knew I wanted to do something with running water. These are basically just darkened glass you put in front of the lens to allow you to keep the shutter open for longer, thus capturing motion, without blowing everything out. The trick, as I quickly learned, is to find something moving in close juxtaposition with something not.
After many, many false starts, I finally settled on this one rock in the stream with some blossoms stuck to it. I had to take off my shoes and bring my tripod down into the stream to get the right perspective, but it was worth it. Not only was I able to arouse some levity among the passers-by, but I also got some very nice shots. (At first the water was extremely cold, but I just lost all sensation in my feet after a few minutes, which is good, because the rocks were sharp, too.)
These first two shots are some of my favorite that I’ve ever taken. I love how the ND filters let me keep the shutter open long enough to make the water all silky, while still capturing the rock-stranded blossoms in perfect clarity. The whisps of light you see are reflections on the water’s surface.
This first one, especially, deserves to be clicked on to see at full size.
Here I was fortunate enough to be in a position to capture a bunch of blossoms blown into the stream by a particularly fierce gust of wind.
…Or not. I cannot tell a lie.
The other day Jeffrey brought over his new lens, the new version of the “Bigma,” or the Sigma 50-500 OS. We were both surprised at the quality of the images considering it’s a 10x zoom. Here are a couple shots I took (with one, obviously, taken by Jeffrey) when he had it over at my house. (For those interested, he has several excellent posts with lots of samples over at his blog.)
“Dang, that’s one nice new lens you have there”
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These next two shots show that the lens has pretty nice bokeh (out of focus rendering) for a big 10x telephoto. These are from the little river right outside the door of our house.
I don’t usually get much culture beyond poopy diapers and Thomas the Tank Engine, so sometimes it’s refreshing to go into Kyoto and indulge myself. As I had last year, this year I went to my favorite shakuhachi-busking corner at Kiyamachi below Sanjo, right beside a babbling brook and under a bunch of cherry blossoms, to play for everyone and hopefully make some change. That last is of course ancillary to the whole enterprise, but adds an element of fun and chance human interaction.
I played just to the left of where you can see in this photo. Lots of people stopped on this bridge to watch me play.
These next three photos were taken by my friend Jeffrey, who dropped by with his son Anthony to watch and take photos before going to a photography exhibit (shown below).
Reminder to self: Iron shirt first next time
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One of my favorite things about doing this is talking to people. This time I met three old ladies, in their 60’s or 70’s. At first they stopped and listened for a few moments, then each gave me a 1000 yen (about 10 dollars) before moving on. This was remarkable for its generosity, and I gave them a bow-while-playing. A while later they came back again, and started requesting certain songs. At this point it was obvious that, although they spoke decent Japanese, they were definitely from somewhere else. I asked and they said they were from Korea. So, I played them the two Korean folk songs that I know by heart. It was very nice, although the entire experience was tinged by the knowledge that most likely the only reason we could communicate at all was because they had grown up in Japanese-occupied Korea, and had been forced to learn the language at school.
Just as I was putting my flute away an elderly Japanese couple approached and started talking to me. The lady said that she really liked shakuhachi, so I took my flute out again and began to play a simple song. At his wife’s urging, the husband began to sing along with me. It was a nice little impromptu duet, and I was glad to have Jeffrey there to capture the moment. Afterward, as I was packing up again, I learned that the lady likes exactly the kind of classical shakuhachi music I specialize in, which is pretty remarkable. It’s the kind of esoteric genre that only those who actually play it make an effort to listen to. (All the songs I play in situations like this street performance are purely shakuhachi arrangements of well-known, 20th century songs.)
After that we all went to a photography exhibit by Sawa Kenji (佐和賢爾), a Buddhist priest and my photography teacher (although that implies a more formal relationship than actually exists). I had seen one of the photographs before, laid out on the floor of his temple, so I had lured Jeffrey out with the promise of an incredible show, and he wasn’t disappointed. I’ll let the photographs below speak for themselves, but in case it’s hard to tell each scene is covered in three or four exposures, which are combined to make unified images. We got there at the very end of the last day, and I just happened to have my flutes with me, so I gave a short impromptu concert there for him and everybody else before they turned on the lights and started taking the photographs down. It was a nice moment.
8 April 2010 Birds
Not usually a big bird photographer, but I like these from today. (And, my previous bird shot garnered a rare compliment from the wife!)
Crows on the underside of the Sanjo bridge
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The same duck in repose a few minutes earlier. Taken with a neutral density filter allowing long exposure in daylight to get silky water effect. The ducks were completely still, which was sporting of them.
It’s cherry blossom season, so here is the obligatory sakura photo. Actually, I have a lot more coming, but this one, sort of influenced by my friend Stephane, stands on its own.
It’s been cherry blossom season for a week or two, but the weather has been so rainy and cold I haven’t been able to get out and take any photos. Nor play shakuhachi under the cherries in Kyoto as I did last year for change. Today was finally semi-warm, so I took my macro lens with me out into town. As I was deciding how to take some non-boring pictures of cherry blossoms this bird alighted obligingly on a branch and made up my mind for me.
(”Birding” refers to a type of photography where people buy insanely expensive lenses to take incredibly boring pictures of birds. Sometimes these are actually good photographs, but pretty rarely. My own hypothesis is that these guys (and it always is guys) just like the technical challenge of shooting birds, and the fact that it’s a good excuse for buying a $10,000 lens.)
