Now that the Karate Masters book is completed and on sale I have time to catch up on things on my to-do list. Here’s a scan of my Kokusai Street feature from last month’s Silkroad, the magazine of Dragonair.
Hokkaido is the northernmost of Japan’s four main islands, and its final frontier. It has a quarter of the country’s landmass, but only one twentieth of its population. Large sections of the island are national parks where foxes, deer and brown bears outnumber people. Visitors come during winter to ski, and during summer to camp, hike and soak in hot spring pools. Hokkaido provides an escape from modern Japan to an almost primordial time. Amidst volcanoes, geysers and ice flows visitors can experience the ancient, wild side of Japan. Winter Attractions Skiing and Snowboarding Hokkaido’s winter weather is strongly influenced by the cold winds blowing in from Siberia. In Sapporo, the temperature regularly drops to -5°C, and further east, away from the ameliorating affects of the ocean, it gets as low as -30°C. The winters bring a lot of snow, and the big dumps of fluffy powder make the island’s ski resorts the best in Japan. Sapporo hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics, but until recently, Hokkaido’s excellent skiing and boarding was not well known outside …
Flowers of the Red Powder Puff, Calliandra haematocephala known locally as obenigoukan. Flowering in Yomitan Village, Okinawa, Japan.
I regularly meet this chondara (Okinawan clown) when teaching my photography workshops, yesterday he had a new face pattern. I had presumed that each chondara would have a unique pattern they would keep for life, but I guess Okinawan clowns take these things lightly.
I’m now offering some prints for sale through Fine Art America. This will allow friends to purchase a wider range of images, sizes, and media than I currently offer. It also means that prints will be available to purchase even when I’m overseas. A few reasons why I chose Fine Art America. 1) Great reviews on the quality of their prints. 2) A large range of products, that I couldn’t offer myself such as canvas prints, frames etc. 3) They produce the items in either the United States or the UK (Glasgow) depending where you’re shipping to. This is the big game changer. The majority of people who have bought my prints are based in either the US or UK. Shipping is therefore affordable, and there are no import taxes for either group. What can’t they offer. 1) Signed prints. For a few more months I will continue to offer signed limited edition prints through the TRAVEL67.com website, but after then these will only be available at exhibitions, bazaars, and in person. Meanwhile I’ll continue …
Dr. Makoto Suzuki is a cardiologist and geriatrician. In 1976, he moved from Tokyo to Okinawa and began work at the Ryukyu University Hospital. While working in the field of community medicine, he discovered that there were an unusually high number of very healthy old people living on Okinawa. He began the Okinawa Centenarian Study, which has documented the phenomenon for more than 30 years. The findings of his research became the basis of several books that became bestsellers in Japan and around the world. How did you discover the phenomenon of Okinawan longevity? “I had heard that there was a very healthy old lady living in Yomitan Village, so I, and two others from the hospital, went out to meet her. She was over 100 years old, but when we arrived she was outside cutting the grass with a sickle. I was amazed at how fit and strong she was. When we talked to her, she didn’t think she was unusual at all. In fact, she pointed out that another healthy centenarian lived directly …
Dr. Andrew Weil is the director of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. He’s been on the cover of Time magazine, written several best selling books and was recently described as one of the twenty most influential people in America. During his visit to Okinawa I talked to him briefly about his thoughts and views on healthy living and the longevity of Okinawans. What do you think are the major problems with the western diet? “Too much meat and animal products in general. Too few vegetables and too few fruits, the wrong kind of fats especially too much refined vegetable oil, margarine and artificially hardened fats, and too few of the Omega-3 fats from fish. Also too much refined carbohydrates, highly processed wheat flour and in general too much processed food, not enough fresh natural food, I’d say they were the main problems.” What can we learn from the Okinawan diet? “Many more vegetables and a greater variety of vegetables, more legumes especially soy and other special Okinawan foods, goya and …
The secrets of longevity are found not in Shangri-la, but in the homes and hearts of the people of Okinawa. Large numbers of people on Okinawa remain strong and active well into their eighties, nineties and even as centenarians. They have amazingly low occurrences of cancer, heart disease, and strokes. And, on Okinawa the proportion of life that is spent with chronic disease is also much less than the average American. This means that Okinawans, in addition to having a longer lifespan, have more healthy years free from medical problems during which they can live a full and active life. Everyday Keiko gets up at 5 a.m. and prepares breakfast for her family. She spends most of the morning in a small field near their home tending the vegetables and fruit trees. Later, she will prepare the evening meal, and then spend the remainder of the day chatting with her friends. The fact that Keiko is over ninety years old is impressive, but there are exceptionally old people all over the world. What is …
The Karate Masters Portrait Project Volume 1 is now available from Blurb.com You can buy your copy here!! After receiving your order Blurb will print your copy and can mail it worldwide. We do not plan to have a stock of books on sale in Okinawa. If a karate organization would like to gift a copy of the book to a particular master this is possible. We can order the copy, have it sent to Okinawa, sign it, and present it in person to the karate master from you. If you’d like to include a message with the book, then I can print out a message and place it inside the book. Please contact me at chris@travel67.com if this is something we can help you with. You can read more about the project, and see the list of all the karate masters in the Karate section of the blog.
There have been fewer than usual blog posts over the last 3 months. In fact the amount of shooting I’ve done has been somewhat limited. The reason is that I’ve been focused on producing the Karate Masters Portrait Project Volume 1. Images from the Karate Masters Portrait Project can be seen on the web at either Facebook or Flickr. However, Karate masters and their students around the world began to ask if we could produce a print book of the project. I decided to make the kind of book that I’d like to own myself. A large, high quality, coffee-table book with images of all 58 sensei that we’d photographed. It quickly became clear that traditional publishers would want orders of several thousand books. Book production would simply be too expensive to undertake, and too risky if I couldn’t sell all of the books. It might have even compromised the future of project as I would have had to concentrate on being a bookseller rather than a photographer. The solution was to use the U.S. …
TRAVEL 67 : Chris Willson Photography 