All posts filed under: Japan

Hachinohe Enburi – Photographs (part 1)

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Nearly two weeks have gone by since my last post, and I am now back in Okinawa. I have started the slow task of scanning the transparencies and will post them to the blog over the next few days.  The festival began at 8 a.m. at Choujasan Shinra shrine. Groups of men wearing horse head inspired hats danced with various farming tools. A young girl did a dance that I think had something to do with planting rice, and then as the snow began to fall again one of the groups of participants gathered for a group photo.  On a technical note, photographing on snow without the aid of a digital screen to check exposure can lead to terribly unexposed photographs if you use auto settings. I didn’t have my handheld meter with me so I used the camera’s meter to first gauge the light off a mid tone building then manually set the exposure on the camera.

Hachinohe Enburi

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On the road again… I’m standing in the lobby of the Aomori Toyoko Inn  using the complimentary internet service while my clothes churn away in the “coin-laundry.”  On Monday I flew from Okinawa to Tokyo then took the shinkansen bullet train to Hachinohe.   Hachinohe is a city of limited charm and is, all in all, a rather desolate snow-blasted place. Maybe because of this the locals enjoy a good celebration and consequently have a big festival in both summer and winter.  On Tuesday I spent the day photographing the Hachinohe Enburi from the initial shrine ceremony at 8am through to an evening performance of the traditional dance. The festival and dances are to ask the gods for a good harvest in the coming months, and to remind each other that they must work hard at tilling fields, planting crops and fishing to get enough food to see them through the winter.   In this  modern age it would be appropriate to now post some photos of the event. I am, however, an analog man in a digital world, which means that the photographs …

Shakuhachi

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  In readiness for some very long train rides next week, I was just uploading music and podcasts to the ipod I’m borrowing for my trip. One of the few songs I have bought through iTunes was Principles Of Lust: Sadeness from Enigma’s MCMXC A.D.album.  Back in 1991 the song managed to bring Gregorian chanting and French rapping to both the top 40 chart and the dance floors of Europe.  Another interesting thing about the song, and the reason I bought the track, was that the main instrument used is a shakuhachi or Japanese end-blown flute. I happened to meet the man in the picture above at Nagoya’s Honensai festival last year. I asked him what the name of his musical instrument was, as it sounded vaguely familiar. A quick google search revealed why I recognized it, not only was it used by Enigma it was also used in the Peter Gabriel’s fantastic song Sledgehammer. More recently it was even used by Linkin Park for the rap/rock track Nobody’s Listening on their album Meteora.  Of course, the shakuhachi …

Photographer Ben Simmons

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Last week photographer Ben Simmons visited Okinawa and dropped by my house for coffee and a chat before exploring the island. It was fantastic to meet Ben and have a good discussion about photography, living in Japan, and the changes in both camera technology and the photography industry as a whole.       I also got some advice on places to shoot when I am in Tokyo for a few days later this month. Ben has published several books including Tokyo and Japanscapes: Three Cameras, Three Journeys.           What pleased me most of all was that after many decades of working as a professional photographer Ben still loves taking photographs. I think it is all to common for the realities of work to erode away the passion you have for something. I know SCUBA diving instructors who found that their dream career rapidly became more and more like a regular job. It gives me confidence that I will still love taking photographs for decades to come.      

Inspiration – Stephen Wiltshire

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When I was around 11 years old I saw a TV programme about an extrodinary British boy just a year older than myself. His name is Stephen Wiltshire and he has not just a photographic memory, but the ability to then reproduce what he has seen on paper. In May 2005 after a helicopter flight over Tokyo he drew a 10 meter long 360 degree panorama of the city over the following 8 days. Possibly the greatest feat of memory there has ever been.   See a larger version of the above panorama here I love Stephen’s work, we have a shared interest in architecture and classic vehicles. Several years ago  I even bought a tiny sketch he had done of a New York taxi. It seems that  taxis have become one of his favorite things to draw, but for me his most awe-inspiring pictures are his cityscapes of London and New York.    Next time I am in London I plan to visit his gallery, but until then I’ll continue to keep up to date with …

Mount Asama Eruption

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Mount Asama, one of the volcanoes in central Japan erupted yesterday. Eruptions are not a rare event in Japan. Mount Sakurajima near Kagoshima regularly has a column of smoke rising from it. Mount Fuji, Japan’s highest mountain, is quite literally a time bomb waiting to explode. At the start of 2000 I was living in Otaru, Hokkaido. On March 31st,  the morning TV news showed that the local volcano, Mount Usu, was smoking. (Note I saw the pictures on the screen, but didn’t understand what the newscaster was saying.) A couple of friends and I had the day off so we decided to go and have a look. We drove from Otaru to Lake Toya, but got a little lost on the way and ended up taking little back roads rather than the main highway. We arrived at Lake Toya to find it was very quiet and there was only a single news photographer standing  at the lake edge. I took a few photographs of the Mount Usu erupting in front of us. The news …

Japan Train Timetables

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I’ve been sitting at my computer planning my next trip. I fly from Okinawa to Tokyo, but will travel by train from Tokyo to Hachinohe to Aomori to Niigata and then back to Tokyo. A decade ago figuring out the how, what, when and where of this journey would have been tricky even for a Japanese speaker. Now in the age of the internet, and with a growing appreciation of English speakers in Japan there is a solution, visit the website hyperdia  and simply enter your start point and destination. There are a few niggles in the system (It seems to assume Tokyo always mean Tokyo Disneyland) but overall I have found it a fantastic resource when planning trips.  

Baraka

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A couple of years ago I met up with Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, a Tokyo based photographer who produces fantastic images for clients ranging from The Guardian to Greenpeace. During our conversation he asked which photographers I was inspired by. There was a rather embarrassing pause, followed by me admitting that I had always been inspired more by TV and movies than photographers.  The truth is it was the images from documentaries like The Trials of Life and movies such as Dances with Wolves and Braveheart that were truly awe-inspiring. There is one film above all others that really affected me  – Baraka. Baraka is a fantastic journey through 24 countries with breathtaking cinematography.  I was amazed when I saw it 14 years ago as a university student, and it still inspires me. One wonderful thing is that I have now been to some of the places captured in the film. I have witnessed snow monkeys relaxing in their hot spring pools, and thousands of commuters surge through Tokyo’s stations. In a previous post I talked about film size and the tradeoff between film size( …

Police Performance

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The South Yorkshire police recently acquired a new pursuit car in the form of a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X. British police have for several years used Mitsubishi Evo’s and Subaru Imprezas which have helped catch numerous wayward motorist and provided a steady stream of exciting chases for shows like the BBC’s Car Wars.  The main police car in Japan is the Toyota Crown (rebranded in the US as a Lexus) but they also have a few special cars including a Godzilla… and a wonderful, yet somewhat impractical, Honda NSX.

Edy & Free Flights with ANA

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Flying around Japan is expensive. There are no discount airlines offering ridiculously cheap fares. For the most part, there are just two options ANA or JAL, and neither are cheap. You can save some money if you fly around your birthday with the special birthday tickets offers, or by buying tickets more than a month in advance. Another option, which is very popular with Japanese, is to get a hotel flight package from a local travel agent.  The cheapest way to fly, however, is to use an airline’s mileage programme and get tickets for free. Both ANA and JAL have a mileage club, and both are affiliated with numerous other airlines to help you build up miles.       Last summer when I flew back to the UK the cheapest flight was with Qatar Airways. The flight was good, and as a bonus the mileage from Qatar Airways could be put onto my ANA Mileage Club card. At the start of December I checked my mileage balance and saw I had  10,400 miles. Unfortunately, …