osaka

osaka

The days are starting to blur together. It's nice not having any responsibilities, I'm not in a hurry to get back home. Today I am in Osaka, the day before yesterday I was in Kyoto.

Harvey makes a new friend

Shots around Kyoto:

"No photography on private road"

Some monochrome shots from the Dotonbori street area in Osaka:

All images were posed except the first two
the nearby forest and torii gates

Highlights since the last update:

  • Demonstration of how to create wagashi 和菓子 (Japanese sweets)
  • Visited the home of a Noh 能 performer to photograph masks and costumes
  • Explored the Gion District ("the famous entertainment and Geisha quarter") in the pouring rain
  • Visited the Fushimi Inari shrine to photograph the torii gates
  • Traveled by train to Arashimaya to see the bamboo forest
  • Visited the Kuromon market
  • Walked around Dotonbori street at night
Rice fields outside Arashimaya
Fans and a kimono from the Noh performance, beautiful beautiful home

I find myself fascinated by the 7-11s here.

mmm
whatever

More shots in Kyoto:

Except for the conspiratorial children, every one of these pictures was posed
No pig No beef No sugar

Signs and stickers:

Feel the subculture

A taxi driver showed us his artwork while we waited at red lights. We spoke through a little egg-shaped translation device called a Pocketalk, it worked quite well with little latency. When I got out of the cab, I told him how talented he was... he gave me a hug AND a gift of his work:

Some other random observations:

  • not a fan of eating knuckles or hearts
  • subways are exactly as crowded as everybody says, navigating them with luggage is extremely difficult
  • prices are reasonable, a good cup of coffee (where beans are ground for each individual cup) is 500¥ (about $3.59)
  • flavored kit-kats are a joy
  • used camera stores everywhere but the gear I'm interested in is no more or less expensive than back home (for example, a Leica M3 with questionable heritage is still around $2000)
  • i really need a modern mirrorless camera with all the bells and whistles, zooming with your feet and manually focusing is all fine and good but i would like to work in "easy mode" sometimes
  • hotel rooms are tiny (and that's fine, i don't need much space)
  • super-easy to get dehydrated when walking around the city all day, i drank 9 huge mugs of water at dinner last night
  • prostitutes do not like to be photographed for some reason 🤷🏻‍♂️

Some random pictures:

Check out the price of fruit!

I have 2 more days of class then we take the bullet train back to Tokyo where I'll stay until June 19th.

Next post: return to tokyo