Blog
-
Japan Wrap-up
Sixteen posts on one trip is a lot, but it was a two-week trip, after all, in new places with lots of time to photograph lots of new things. I ended up with a little over 2,500 images and have now published 119 of them on this website. Of these, 102 were taken with my
-
Shosenkyo Gorge
My last full day in Japan was spent in the city of Kofu in Yamanashi Prefecture, west of Tokyo, and my daughter was back to work that day so I was on my own. I decided to take a 40-minute bus ride out to Shosenkyo Gorge. I knew that the bus left from bus stand
-
Rural Aomori
There is always a big difference between urban and rural areas, but certainly in Japan, where Tokyo is on one side of the comparison, the difference is pretty extreme. I enjoyed seeing the this row of giant radishes hanging from a pole, which is definitely not something you would find in Shinjuku City. I’m not
-
Stormclouds over Aomori
As I mentioned in the previous post, Aomori Prefecture is the northernmost prefecture on Japan’s main island of Honshu. The city of Aomori itself averages 26 feet of snow annually, more than any city in the world. I visited in November, and December–February turned out to be one of the snowiest in decades. It would
-
Torii! Torii! Torii!
Takayama Inari Shrine, and its senbon torii (thousand torii), are decidedly not easy to get to without a car: three buses, a long walk, and about two-and-a-half hours later we were exploring the grounds. The “thousand” torii is symbolic, rounded up from the just over 200 torii that are actually there. Regardless, they are striking
-
Autumn in Morioka
Morioka is a little over 300 miles north of Tokyo. My daughter and I only ended up staying there because we had a one-night gap to fill between our hotel in Tokyo and our hotel in Aomori even further north. So, it was essentially a layover in our shinkansen (bullet train) journey and we spent
-
Urban Abstracts
Before the blog moves on from Tokyo, I wanted to share some images that are a of a more abstract flavor. It’s fun to exploit buildings with lots of glass, like in the image above, where the left half of the image is filled with reflections of the right half. At this point, four months
-
Dilapidation, Tokyo-Style
Tokyo is truly massive. It would take ten more visits and some real dedication before I became at all suspicious of having walked 0.01% of its streets, so there is nothing definitive or comprehensive about any impressions of the city I might have. That disclaimer aside, like any city there are nice areas and not-so-nice
-
Among the Skyscrapers
Lots of my friends have never been to Tokyo, so naturally they ask me what I thought. A week in Tokyo hardly makes me an expert, but is long enough to have formed some lasting impressions. One general comment is that Tokyo is not a tall city. Tokyo feels more like a five- or six-story
-
Golden Turd
It didn’t take long for my daughter and I to notice the weird giant yellow thing across the river near our hotel in Asakusa. “What is that?” I asked. She looked on her phone for a minute and then laughed. “Oh,” she said, “it’s the ‘Asahi Flame’, but the locals call it ‘The Golden Turd’”.