Last night the kids went to bed relatively early after a day of play and Maki had the night shift, so I stayed up and fooled around taking pictures, first from my balcony and then from my preferred studio (the kitchen table).

Lower part of lake Biwa
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On the other side of that hill lies Kyoto
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Everyone liked this shot of Zoe, so here is a blown-up version.

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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.

“Roten-buuurrow”
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Here’s our room shot from outside on the balcony. Very nice and spacious.

“Japanese modern” was the style of the decor
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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.

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Much frolicking was had…

Where’s Zoe’s head?
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…and jumping too and fro…

I used to do the same exact thing in hotels, I remember.
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Finally, Genbo’s yukata arrives.

Reporting for silliness, Sir!
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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.

So glad I’m not a vegetarian
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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.

Just big enough for two large and two small
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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.

Comfy
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The other day the Kamadas came over for a little new year’s get-together, which involved hanging around at our house for a while and then going out for some great yaki-niku, where you grill your own meat at the table and drink lots of draft beer. The owner is a fan of Kamada-san’s pottery, which I’ve blogged about in the past, and he treated us like kings, especially because Kamada-san brought him a little present at my suggestion.

Genbo acting….Like Genbo
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He loves that thing. I think Maki made it for him. Those Japanese are good with folded paper.
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Kamada-san playing with Zoe
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Zoe and Mom
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The photo below shows them playing something very interesting. Japanese people are very big on various forms of karuta, or cards. The most widespread version is the Hyakunin-Isshu, which was originally an anthology of 100 poems compiled in the 12th century.These were then assembled into a deck of cards, with each card containing a single poem in calligraphic form. The game is that two or more people will sit in front of the spread-out deck, while another person reads the poems at random. The contestants then have to find the appropriate card and pick it up before their opponent does. This is actually a very big “sport” in Japan, with national championships, ranks, and the level of obsession Japanese people pour into just about everything. The “pros” only have to hear one or two syllables before they recognize which poem is being read, and their hand shoots out unbelievably fast. Here is one gorgeous video showing people dressed up in the ceremonial garb of the 12th century playing the game at Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto (a ritual carried out at the beginning of each new year), and here is a national news report about the national championships, with some great video showing how fast the pros are. Coincidentally, this is at the shrine where Genbo and Zoe go to daycare.

Anyway, Genbo got a deck of karuta for new year’s from his Japanese grandparents, although these don’t have the Hyakunin-Issue poems on them, but rather kotowaza, or Japanese proverbs. Being a confucian country, Japanese people are big at sprinkling proverbs into conversation. They learn them very early—five years old, in fact. Genbo already has his proverb cards memorized, and Zoe isn’t actually half bad either.

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Today I turned 37. This is therefore both the first year of another 12-year cycle, and the year that I emerge from my late mid-thirties into my early late-thirties. Just by chance today was Maki’s day off work, so we went to Cosco and then the Patagonia outlet down near Osaka with everybody. It was a nice, relaxing family day. (Except that no outing with a 5 year old and a 2 year old is ever truly relaxing.)

Today I’m going to give myself the present of blogging. It’s something that I fall into and out of the habit of doing, and something I most definitely enjoy when I do, and yet for some reason when I get out of the habit it’s hard to break the barrier of inertia. A lot like shakuhachi playing, actually.

Which leads me into this picture. I had agreed to play for the old-folks’ group in our condo a few days after new year’s. I had done it last year, and it was fun. This year it somehow, without my knowledge, it turned into a general spring concert for whomever wanted to come. I happened to have a friend’s kimono on hand, so I wore a full formal kimono for the first time while playing. It definitely puts you into the mood to play, and I (of course) want to buy my own now, but (of course) they are incredibly expensive and require approximately ten different knots to put on (some in back of you). I was lucky enough to find someone in the building who knew how to dress me, because putting on one of these things is definitely a skill that takes some practice.

Full regalia
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Here are a few more pics from the shrine I mentioned in yesterday’s post. As you can see, it was a place of pristine natural beauty.

A bamboo grove to set a shakuhachi player’s heart aflutter
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As photographers in Japan soon learn, judicious cropping goes a long way.

Or not
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And, of course, some leaves:

Ruby and Gold
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Here are a few choice photos from the other day of play, when I put up a slideshow.

We’re leaving for the States tomorrow for three weeks; I should be posting intermittently from there.

Zoe loves her umbrella. She insists on using it even when it’s not raining.
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Genbo being Genbo…
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She’s a total tomboy, but for some reason she makes an exception for this dress
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I stress: Outfit by Zoe
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Actually this photo perfectly captures Genbo’s expression at play, which covers 90% of the time he isn’t sleeping
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Ahh…A child staying still and looking out a window…Nothing to send a photographer’s blood racing more
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The perfect pose
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This expression is totally unlike Zoe, but is cute nonetheless
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So today was the second day of my photography group’s exhibition, and my day to go and “mind the store.” It was the first time I saw my pieces printed and framed, and I was very pleased. Here I am hamming it up in front of my piece, Mountain Storm, which is an abstract macro of a piece of pottery about 5 mm (1/4″) across.

For a better view, click here.

Now that I have a mountain, I want to continue the series and see if I can make interesting depictions of rivers, oceans, or or the sky using similar techniques. The hard part is to make it interesting and somehow emotionally impactful. Yes I know that isn’t a word.

Acting Japanese
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Here is my piece next to another tryptic of some Kabuki actors. I described the process of how these three photos were selected here. I like how they placed the most abstract piece next to the most dramatically human and concrete.

Nice contrast
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I like each of these photos, and I like them together.

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This is the sensei’s piece. The location is Izumo Jinja, a huge shrine. The tree is white because people have tied thousands of fortunes to it. When you’re at a shrine or a temple in Japan, you often buy a fortune for a dollar or two. People usually bring the good fortunes home, but tie the bad ones onto a nearby tree, from which they are collected once a year and burned en masse.

“Where Spirits Reside,” by Kenji Sawa
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Today there was no daycare because there was a huge typhoon moving through. Ultimately is was pretty anticlimactic, at least where we are, but the kids got a play day out of it. These pictures are all taken in the “Kids’ Room” of our building, which is really nice to have on rainy days like this. I’m going to select a few of the best photos for a regular post later, but I figured I would try out the slideshow functionality of Zenfolio, which will let me put more photos up without making ridiculously long blog posts.

(Outfit selected by, in fact vociferously insisted upon, by Zoe herself.)