Since the weather has gotten nicer I’ve been in the mood to shoot some color photos, and what better subject than the cherry blossoms.
Posted in Japan, Uncategorized, photo
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Tagged cherry blossom, flower, hanami, Japan, sakura, spring, tree, 日本, 春, 桜, 花見
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This scene is repeated daily at my local train station. Japan has gotten a lot of praise since the earthquake and tsunami for their incredible order. While it’s true that the obedient and orderly nature of the Japanese is an asset in trying times, in non-trying times it can be quite trying itself, especially if you dare step out of line.
(shot with my vintage Ansco Shur Shot and developed in coffee)
Posted in Asia, Japan, photo
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Tagged 120, Ansco, B&W, big brother, film, Japan, Japanese, medium format, obedience, obey, station, submission, train
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On a little side road in the Japanese countryside I stopped to say hi to some flowers and a cloud.
Tri-X@200 in D-76. I really do NOT like this combination, however, it worked for this picture.
As I mentioned in previous posts, the area I live in was fortunately not directly affected by the massive earthquake and tsunami. People here are going about their business as normal despite potential for a triple nuclear meltdown at the striken Fukushima nuclear power plant. I guess while I sit here too and wait for some good information (which has been in scarce supply), I’ll go about finishing up my series on the Hina Matsuri.
This came from a roll of film I was experimenting with. I shot Tri-X at EI200 and pulled development a bit. Some people say this produces really nice images. I personally am not impressed and prefer Fujifilm Acros@200 over Tri-X@200.
The news both local (to me in Japan), as well as international, has been showing the massive destruction in Japan from the magnitude 9 earthquake followed by the powerful tsunami one week ago. Without downplaying the seriousness of the situation, the severe destruction in some towns in the region, and the suffering of those involved, I think it’s important to point out that a majority of Japan was not directly affected.
The earthquake was off the coast, centered on the ocean floor, therefore the shaking of Japan in most cases, while severe, was less than the magnitude 8.9 rating of the quake at it’s source. The horrible tsunami hit the Pacific north-east coast and came as much as a mile or so inland in some areas. Many towns were leveled by it and thousands killed. We must do everything we can to help them, and this will likely be the most expensive natural disaster in history and the human suffering is enormous with over 6,000 deaths and 10,000 missing at this point. However, I think it is also important to remember that this represents a moderately small portion of this island nation of 127,000,000 people. Japan is by no means out for the count.
Away from the scenes of destruction, there are scenes of normality everywhere.
So please, keep Japan in your thoughts, make donations and send any help you can, but try not to let the images lead you into thinking that the whole nation is in such a dire situation. Japan will recover and it will still be a beautiful and exotic place that you should visit!
As I mentioned in my previous post, I live in an area that was relatively unaffected and am fine.
News sites like cnn.com and msnbc.com as well as American TV (from what I hear) are full of video and stories from Japan which are really worth seeing and paying attention to.
This article however is particularly crazy. It appears that the quake MOVED the main island of Japan (Honshu) by 8 feet and shifted the Earth’s axis due to the displacement of mass! Does this mean that all geotagged photos, Google Earth, and other GPS info. is always going to be off by 2 meters in Japan now? I’d imagine that there aren’t provisions for updating this in many GPS devices as LAND MASSES AREN’T SUPPOSED TO MOVE o_O!
There was a massive earthquake followed by large tsunamis in Japan today. I am safe and fortunately live in an area of Kyushu that was relatively unaffected. There has been a huge amount of damage and deaths up and down a large portion of the country. The videos on the news are unreal and look like a disaster movie. It was one of the strongest earthquakes recorded in the last 100 years according to news sources.
Some links to news: CNN video and report, MSNBC video and coverage
(map “borrowed” from tenki.jp. It shows the Japanese earthquake scale which goes up to 7 (7 being the worst))
This doll that I found in the garden of a temple in Yanagawa is SO CUTE. I wonder if they would sell him to me :-3
The emperor and empress dolls wear traditional kimonos from the Heian era (792-1192AD) consisting of 12 layers, no doubt a part of the reason for the high cost of these.
