26 July 2006, early morning I couldn't sleep. Thinking too much about situations at work. I usually manage to avoid thinking too much about this kind of stuff, but on occasion it gets to me.
I managed to do everything on the list below. The weather last Saturday was fine, and not even very hot, so the fireworks festival was a big success. Ashiya Summer Carnival really is one of the best shows for location and ease of finding a spot to sit, and magnitude of fireworks. This time I took all of my fireworks photos in black and white. I haven't printed any yet, but I think they'll be okay. I even went totally simple, and used a point and shoot camera. It worked beautifully. As long as the camera has a "bulb" setting, you can use it for fireworks.
The movie was a lot of fun too. It was great to see big-budget movies at the cinema. We're planning to see Mission: Impossible this coming Sunday. I'm looking forward to another three-day weekend. All weekends should be three days long. It's refreshing.
I got my re-entry permit, so now we're all booked and set for a five-day trip to Saipan for Kanae-san's wedding. Kanae-san is one of Kumiko's old friends (from college?) who now lives in Hino city, in view of Mount Fuji. Kumiko and I stayed with Kanae's parents in Hino city a couple of years ago. They're really intelligent, warm people, and we'll be happy to see them again in Saipan. Saipan is part of the Northern Marianas island chain. Six years ago, I would never have imagined that it would be part of my vacation plans. It's just one of those places you briefly see in world war two history programs. But it's popular for Japanese tourists, and relatively close by. I've been thinking about life in one of these out-of-the-way islands. I think most of the residents are poor by our standards, but I'll bet they get a lot of three-day weekends, and don't lose much sleep over their jobs. I could be wrong.
20 July 2006, before work Today is going to be the grand finale of a tough week at work. I'm looking forward to 12 hours from now when I'll be walking out the office door on my way back here. Our weekend is shaping up nicely. I'll have three days off:
Friday - immigration office (again) to apply for a re-entry permit, so I can go to a wedding in Saipan in September, followed by some printing at B-Koubo, if they're open, and dinner at an izakaya with some friends.
Saturday - If the weather clears up, the first of the summer fireworks festivals - Ashiya Summer Carnival - kicks off the season. It's one of our favorite festivals.
Sunday - Pirates of the Caribbean with Jenny and Paul. Let the summer blockbusters roll!I've put up a set of photos from my Tokyo trip.
9 July 2006, at night I've just come back from a whirlwind tour of Tokyo. I took the overnight bus, because it's the cheapest way of getting there, but partially undermined the savings by mistaking the departure time, and having to rush to the station via a 3000 yen taxi ride. At 11pm, my bus left Namba Station and at 5:50am arrived at Tokyo Station. It was really hard to sleep on the bus. The seats barely folded back and I couldn't get comfortable. I did enjoy the rest stops at least. Before arriving at Tokyo Station, we rolled past the grounds of the Imperial Palace, and I looked on longingly, it was such a beautiful scene, and me and my camera trapped in a moving bus. As soon as I got off the bus, I made my way back there and spent about two hours walking around and taking pictures. There were police guarding the entrances (it is, after all, the home of the Emperor), so I couldn't see most of the grounds. There was plenty to keep my attention in the public areas, however. The Emperor keeps a pretty freaking awesome garden.
Then the reality of being awake at 8am, having walked around for 2 hours in the stale July air, having gotten very little sleep on my 7-hour bus ride, hit me, and I had to sit down and get some breakfast in air-conditioned comfort, so I made my way back to Tokyo Station and found a 24-hour place that specializes in ishiyaki bi bin ba (a Korean dish of rice and egg and vegetables served sizzling in a hot stone bowl). Bi bin ba is one of my favorites, but I don't have much chance to eat it. I wish we had that restaurant in Osaka. I used their cruddy bathroom to brush my teeth and put on another coat of deodorant before stepping back into the miasmic morning air.
My only plan, and reason for going to Tokyo, was to meet the Japan-based members of my online photography group, as well as a visiting American member, Per Volquartz (turns out he's actually Danish), who was there for a publishing trade show. The meeting was set for 1pm at Per's hotel, so at about 10, I got on the train and headed towards Tokyo Bay. I stopped in Daiba, which I found out is a recently developed area, so not that interesting to me photographically. There are a couple of really high-class hotels there, including the Hotel Nikko, where I took a short nap on a lobby sofa.
Eventually it came to be time for our lunch meeting, and it was a lot of fun to meet everyone. Per had invited some reps of Ebony Cameras, and they brought along a big 8x10inch view camera to demonstrate. It was a beautiful thing, but entirely impractical for me, being giant in size and price. It makes a negative which is more than four times the size of the camera I described in my last post, at a price which I gather is about 83 times the price I paid. No kidding.
Everyone I met at the lunch was really nice and interesting to talk to. We showed some of our photographs. We talked about cameras. We looked at Per's professional prints. He gave us advice for improving our own prints.
Then most of us went to the trade show, which was really boring of course, except for talking to Per's exhibit partners, who are trying to market a series of literary classics re-written in simplified English for learners and illustrated with colorful drawings. Seemed like a good idea at the time, though now that I mention it, I guess the only thing that made those books classics was the quality of writing. I don't suppose re-writing them at a 2nd grade level is going to leave them with much attention-keeping value. If you take a book like Kidnapped, and remove all of Robert Louis Stevenson's words, and then replace them with someone else's words, and condense it to 50 or so pages, then I think the book ceases to be Kidnapped. That's not the point though. The point is to use them to learn English. I think kids will like them, but then again, who can really predict what kids will like? In any case, they're endorsed by Konishiki, Japan's most popular living sumo legend, so that should garner some attention at least. Kids love him too.
After the trade show, we went down to Shinjuku and looked around in the film and darkroom annex of Yodobashi Camera, before going to an awesome used equipment shop. We spent a long time in there. I could have stayed twice as long if my feet hadn't been aching. We wrapped it all up at an izakaya nearby, where we ate a giant tuna head (and a bunch of other things).
I barely found my bus in time, but I did, and managed to endure the 7 hour return trip. I arrived in Umeda at about 5:30, came home, took a much needed shower, and then got some real sleep. Now I'm facing a weird night. The world cup final is on at 3am, so I think I'll just stay up and watch it, rather than try and wake up for it. Then I can go back to sleep for 5 hours.
A bucket at a shrine in Mino.
Photo with Rolleiflex Standard on Kodak T-Max 400
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