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.)
I’ve blogged often about my friend Kamada Koji (鎌田幸二), who has been kind enough to devote decades of his life to becoming a master potter in the Tenmoku (天目) style just so that I could take macros of his stuff. Last week he held a yearly show at Takashimaya, one of the fancier Japanese department stores. I would have loved to bring my tripod, kick everybody out, and adjust the light to my specifications, but any picture-taking at all is ordinarily forbidden. I had his special permission, but still felt it was a good idea to be as discreet and fast as possible.
Kamada-san pointing center, with his wife Kazumi
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It’s exceedingly difficult to capture the nuances of nearly all his glazes, but this particular one most of all, because in real life the colors are not only extremely subtle, but they shift mercurially (almost literally because they are metallic crystals) with small changes in light.
There have been some cell phone photos I’ve been wanting to share, but I’m slightly hesitant to put measly cell photos up here. But, I now have a critical mass, so here goes.
My grocery store believes in really fresh fish (or at least the illusion thereof, since I’m sure this sucker was frozen, too)
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She’s a natural (too bad her shakuhachi lessons begin next week)
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Japanese mothers are rightly famous for their ornate bento, or lunch boxes, and I quail at the thought of competing on a daily basis. Genbo and Zoe only have bento once a month, though, so on those days I’m willing to pull out all the stops. Here is one from last week:
That’s a bed of rice covered by scrambled eggs (with milk, cinnamon, cloves, and vanilla extract, since we had extra French Toast batter left over from breakfast), mackerel (chopped and simmered for about an hour in soy sauce, fish/seaweed stock, mirin, sugar, sake, more sugar, and some more soy sauce), and spinach (flavored with soy sauce and mirin), all topped with chikuwa (compressed fish product) branded with Anpanman characters. Phew.
Finally, this is a shot I took last night after a long day of work (hey, it happens sometimes). The location is my local watering hole, 母の一味 (”Tastes Like Mom’s”). This is the owner of the establishment, whom everybody calls, surprisingly enough, “Mom” (perfectly natural in a Japanese context). I was testing out my new Griffin Clarifi, an iPhone case with a built-in close-up lens. Works pretty good (also used for the bento picture above).
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iPhone camera
This alleyway leading to a fine Kyoto dining establishment is quintessentially Kyoto. Or, rather, is the image the Kyoto often seeks to brand itself with, even though alleyways like this are actually fairly rare. Either way, it’s nice.
They were doing some construction on the bark-covered walls as I went to the camera store, and by the time I passed by on the way back with my new lens they were done.
“Brand-spanking new, but built to look old”
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I like the wood used on this post, although I have no idea how they got it to look that way.
Today I took in my venerable Nikon 16-85 3.5-5.6 VR and traded it in (I repeat, Maki: TRADE-IN) for a Tamron 17-50 2.8 VC. In other words, I lost the “Nikon” label and some reach on the telephoto end for the ability to take better photos in poor light and create nice bokeh. A good trade-off, in my opinion. Here I’m taking advantage of the 2.8 aperture to create some nice bokeh I never could have with the Nikon. At 50 mm the Nikon was an unbearably slow f5, so all that stuff behind the statue, such as the tree and the woman with the red umbrella (had to wait while for a colorful umbrella to pass) would have been boringly in focus.
I have a friend here named Stephane, a French guy who who is a fellow Nikon owner and photo enthusiast. He takes great pictures, often processing them heavily so that, paradoxically, only the “essense” remains. I’m giving a very small-scale shakuhachi concert this Sunday at his house, and when I was there a few days ago to talk about it he snapped some shots of me preparing.
Stephane really likes the long flute, so I’ve prepared a couple songs for the occasion 
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Me with the long flute by the window
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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.
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).
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.
Just screwing around in Lightroom, actually figuring out how to use some of its best functionality, like the adjustment brush. Obviously very heavy-handed here, but I think the effect matches the guy’s expression.
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.
