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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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.
It’s so hard to keep a two year-old still. And, when she’s sleeping it’s usually in a dark room. Today, however, for some reason she didn’t take a nap at daycare, and hence fell asleep in my arms 30 seconds after coming home (about 10 seconds after insisting she wasn’t tired). After laying her down on the couch I brought out my tripod and a macro to take some still lifes.
Everyone liked this shot of Zoe, so here is a blown-up version.
As I explained in the previous post, Maki and I used to go to hotspring overnights in Kyushu a lot when we lived there. These places invariably only had 10-20 rooms, although with excellent service and food. I would be hesitant to take a 2 and a 5 year old to such a place, however. So, for this excursion, our first such overnight since Genbo was born, we chose a larger hotel. The onsen, Keburikawa in Kameoka, was in fact bigger and more institutional than both of us expected. At first I was a little disappointed by this, but our room was still excellent, and the size of the place meant that we didn’t have to keep Genbo and Zoe on such a tight leash (reducing stress). I was extremely glad that we decided at the last minute to spring for the room with its own outside bath; it really made the trip for us.
Here’s the balcony off our room, with its private bath made of shigaraki pottery. In Japanese it’s called a rotenburo, which Genbo still thinks is an English word because he learned it at a friend’s house in the States where there is an outside hot-tub. It’s hilarious to hear him pronounce this very Japanese word with an American accent.
Here’s our room shot from outside on the balcony. Very nice and spacious.
Wearing yukata, or simple kimono, is one of the pleasures of any onsen. Here is Zoe in hers, while Genbo waits in his skivies for his larger size to be delivered (he is, to put it mildly, taller than most Japanese 5-year olds). I particularly cherish this picture because Zoe, being a little bit more reserved than her brother, doesn’t often give the camera her full-wattage smile.
Much frolicking was had…
…and jumping too and fro…
Finally, Genbo’s yukata arrives.
Onsen exist just as much for the food as the baths, and the fact that you pay by the person instead of by the room attests to where much of your money goes. Although at smaller onsen you usually eat in your room, here there was a restaurant, where everybody was knocking back beer and sake in their yukatas. You had a choice of three different meals, and we chose the wild boar, which is apparently a local specialty.
Before dinner we had gone to the large public (gender-divided) baths, but after dinner we filled our own private one. It was raining outside, which just added to the atmosphere.
It was a long day for Zoe, who curled up in her favorite place before bed and didn’t even have the energy to bat my camera away or shield her face.
Yesterday we took our first family trip with all four of us to anywhere other than our respective ancestral homes. We went to an onsen, or natural hotsprings, about 45 minutes outside of Kyoto in a little town called Kameoka (30 minute train ride, followed by a 15 minute shuttle bus).
Maki and I used to go to lots of hotsprings when we were childless and lived in Kyushu, the land of excellent onsen, but it’s not really the kind of things you enjoy with babies in tow. Still, it’s nice to get away for even just a night and enjoy some awesome baths and great food, and Genbo and Zoe do at least a passable of impression of human beings most of the time these days, so we’ve decided to explore the outskirts of Kyoto to see what we can find. These shots are all from the train to the onsen, as was the previous post.
I took this first shot before I realized my camera was still on full manual mode from my last macro shoot. Still, I like how Genbo is hamming it up for and Zoe is hiding from the camera. Only Adobe Lightroom saved an completely screwed-up exposure.
Everybody’s personality coming to the fore 
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This next shot is from directly above Genbo as he gazes out the front of the train.
