DyDo Decisions

Japan is the vending machine capital of the world. There is no end to the things you find in the little machines that are everywhere. You can buy drinks (hot, cold, and sometimes in a cup with ice), underwear, eggs, fried octopus balls, ice cream, and rice. I have a couple more vending machine photo ideas that hopefully I'll get around to taking before too long.

Lake View Parking

Taken in the parking lot of a 7-11 on the way home from work. The lake is Lake Hamanako.

Blue

This week's Lens Day Challenge is Blue. I snapped this on the way to work today.

Buddhist Bell

I took this picture in Mori, a town about half an hour away. It's quite a nice little place with some scattered temples and shrines. We could never find the castle ruins though...

I'm currently in the process of changing the format of my blog, so things might look funny for a day or two.

Grocery Shopping (Thursday Challenge)

While in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, we stopped by this gent's store. It was one of the several floating markets where you could buy seafood. We loaded up for the evening's special event: it was the captain's birthday.

Autumn's Arrival

It's been rainy and cold. The leaves are changing. I guess autumn is here.

The Citrus Conundrum

In Japan there are unattended fruit stands lining the roads. There is a little box set on the stand and people are trusted to pay the marked price. It's remarkable to me that people don't just steal the fruit.

The conundrum, at least for us, is the unending variety of citrus fruits. They seem to always be growing, even in the middle of winter. We have no idea what most of them are.

Swing Low

Taken outside a shrine near my grocery store.

The Bane of Japanese Sunsets

I like living in Japan, but the power lines can get a little frustrating. They're everywhere. You can hardly point your camera skyward without taking a picture of one.

This week marked one month of continuous posts and the 1,000th viewing.

It's the Little Things in Life

Having pizza delivered to your apartment or house may not seem like that big of a deal, but the satisfaction of managing such a task in another language is immense. And it's good pizza.

Transcendental Telecommunications (Lens Day)

I dug into the archives to respond to this week's Lens Day Challenge: Technology. This was taken in a small temple near the ruins of Ayuthaya, the ancient capital of Thailand.

The composition is terrible, and the lighting less than ideal, but how often do you see a monk meditating next to his fax machine?

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

A tunnel through the mountains of Tenryu.

Rust bucket

A close up shot of the side of a bucket on a bulldozer. Thus ends the construction pictures.

Whatever you do...

... don't pull the red one.

The Claw

This is the other construction shot I was pleased with. I'm not sure why, really... I just like it.

Mechanical Advantage

There were two shots from the construction site that I was particularly happy with. The first is this one of a pulley. I might have been a little over zealous with the depth of field.

Heavy

I shot some pictures at a construction site the other day.

Like a Stick of Incense in the Wind

Still the same shrine. I have a bit of an affinity for pictures of burning incense at shrines.

Mida-no Jouin

This picture was taken at the same shrine as yesterday. Statues of Buddha are always made with the hands in particular positions, called mudra. This mudra is almost exclusively found in Japan. It's called the Mida-no Jouin. It is the meditation mudra of Amida Buddha. Now, what all that means, I have no idea.

The Lists

I took this at a shrine near my wife's high school. Shrines often have a display like this to show the names of people who have given money. I think it shows how much too, but I could be wrong about that part.

Get a Grip

This was taken on the way home from date night. There's another version I would like to take, but being a foreigner, taking a close up picture of the handles on the train, you attract a good bit of attention.

Date Night

My wife and I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the other night. Movies in Japan are quite expensive, so we rarely go. There's something about sitting in a movie theatre that makes me forget that I'm in a different country.

Dust Off That Richard Simmons Video

Though I usually stick to a picture a day, I thought I would post this series of photos from Sport's Day at my wife's high school in honor of Japan's National Health and Sports Day. My wife is fortunate enough to get the day off.

No athletic event would be complete unless it started with the synchronized stretches that are ever so popular here.

The tug-of-war.

This is probably my favorite shot of the day. I would have liked the body to be more in focus, but I feel like it captured the motion.

Another high jump shot.

A parting panning shot of a runner.

Photography ala Japan

Last week, my wife and I went into downtown only to discover that there was some sort of dance exhibition going on. I spent probably half an hour or so trying to get this shot. Camera phones are quite popular here (it's hard to get a mobile phone without one). I like that you can see the dancer on the phone.

I also like this picture becasue I've been reading a little about the changing face of photojournalism in the last few days. There's a really interesting section on the BBC with a great selection of provactive photos that can you read here (look in the one titled World Press Photo). A word of warning, though, the pictures are graphic. There was also an interesting piece in Forbes about the way that camera phones are changing photojournalism as an industry.

The Train in the Window

I like this picture a lot, though I worry that it is too busy. The red strip in the middle is the 'Red Line,' the train we use to get back and forth from the down town area.

The Secret Window

I took this one a little earlier in the day (from yesterday's picture).

Look Right, Look Left...

I took this in Hamamatsu this weekend. It took us a while to get the hang of looking to the right for traffic (you know, the whole driving on the left side of the road thing). The title is from a little tune I sing with my kindergarten.

Dropping in for a Mid-day Snack

I'm not overly keen on macro photography (especially since I don't have a macro lense), but I saw this moth land as I was walking back to my car after taking yesterday's picture.

Someone's Getting Their Vitamin C

I drive by this apartment building everyday on the way to work. The other day I noticed someone was hanging out bags of oranges. I'm not really sure why, but I thought that it warranted a picture.

Puri Kura

These pictures were taken in a special kind of photo booth that is quite popular in Japan. You take pictures with different backdrops and different poses. Then you move outside the machine to a computer screen that lets you decorate the pictures with little shapes and phrases. These are from my wife's collection. (300D, AE, 1/20Av, f5.6, ISO 400, 18.0 - 55.0mm at 55.0mm)

The Birds

This post is titled in honor of my mom, who never quite recovered from that classic Hitchcock tale. I took it on the way to work the other day. The birds are going nuts with the farmers harvesting rice. (300D, AE, 1/800, f10, ISO 200, 18.0 - 55.0 mm at 55.0 mm)

The Last of that Sunset

This is the last one that I'll post of the sunset from the other night. I had one of just the clouds, but somehow I like the perspective you get with the silhouette. (300D, 1/320, f8.0, ISO 200, 18.0 - 55.0 mm at 28.0 mm)