Seeing Clearly

It's been awhile! I noticed that I don't take many black and white photos in Japan, but I finished a couple recently and want to share the aftermath. I like getting my black and white rolls back because they have often been in my camera for a month or two, since I don't usually use black and white. When I get the rolls back, there are usually pictures I barely remember taking, seasons that no longer exist, and events that are pushed back into my memory after nearly falling into the black depths of my mind.

I titled this post, "Seeing Clearly," mainly for the reason above - that letting my photos accumulate and viewing them after a length of time allows me to see the context of their experience from a removed and clear perspective. Kind of like when something ends and only after viewing it months later can you really understand what it was. Speaking of experiences and ends, I am currently in my last month in Akita, Japan. I think I realized how short this is when, a couple weeks ago, a friend and I were talking about something we had been wanting to do together (it might have been hiking, I forget), and after I said we should schedule it, she reminded me that there wasn't any free time left. It caught me so off guard. We always think there's so much time left. What an illusion.

I also realized the impact of this soon-to-be-ending when I gave a speech to all of my students recently, telling them I will be leaving at the end of July. Sometimes my students will do really cute or pure things, just extensions of their being kind-of-things. Today, I walked by the Kendo practice on my way to my car and saw one of the pudgy first-years, sword in hand, yelling the same grunt over and over while practicing a Kendo move, perhaps trying to commit it to memory. Watching him do that made me really love him for some reason. It also made me really sad. Sometimes I look at people that seem especially pure to me and it really kind of hurts to even look at them. I don't really understand it. I have another first year student who is literally about half as tall and half as thin as me - he's so tiny and truly adorable. Whenever he comes into the teachers' room and then exits, the other teachers all pine over his cuteness together. I love to look at him because he's so adorable, but it really hurts sometimes. I really don't know what it is. I think maybe I am imagining the true reality of him - that maybe when he looks in the mirror, he doesn't think he's adorable, or that maybe he does, but that he doesn't want to be adorable, he wants to be handsome, and that maybe one day, or perhaps already, he's done something that really just made him happy, maybe something silly, but that someone told him it was weird or that he shouldn't do it, and then he would stop because he felt bad about doing that thing. I think the same thing about my purest, most free-spirited students when I see them taking a test and knowing both that they do not know all the answers and that they probably feel bad about now knowing all the answers. That kills me. I also felt this way whenever I'd see a bunny on campus last year and we'd make eye contact and it would sit there, shaking at the terrifying sight of me, and then run away. I would just feel really bad about it. I'd stop looking at them or try to walk really slowly or take different routes because I hated knowing that I disrupted their innocence. Maybe that's what it is - disrupted innocence. I guess the fear I have when I look at my students is that maybe one day there won't be any innocence left to disrupt.

Cameras used: Ricoh GR1 (first roll ever!), Nikon FM10
Film used: Ilford Delta 400, Ilford HP5 Plus 400, respectively



This DJ's setup was great...lots of monitors with either splashes of colored patterns or all white, like this. Kind of made me feel like I was being brainwashed, but then again, I guess I kind of was. He's blurry in the photo because he kept throwing his head around the whole time. I think I sort of loved him.



Trying to read graffiti in Japanese is a task my brain is just not ready for.



I'm glad that Kohta is laughing in this picture because he and his wife (next to him) are always laughing.


The irony that they used those umbrellas when it wasn't raining and when I was in the rain (on the right), I was without an umbrella.


Now, it's sort of like this never existed.


My calligraphy teacher. He's so cute. I just noticed that he dresses like a hipster. His name is Oishi.


This is my calligraphy teacher's calligraphy teacher! I think that means he's on the same level as Zeus or something. He drew this huge calligraphy at our demonstration. They had to put the ink in a bucket because the brush was so large. When he started painting, he slammed the brush onto the paper and the ink splattered all over the floor, as far back as where I was standing. I put a little dab on my camera strap for good luck. I told him this later and showed him the ink spot but I don't think Gods really care about weird girls who dip their camera straps in splattered ink.



I was really amazed during winter when I discovered that snowflakes actually look like snowflakes. 



After living in Japan for almost a year, looking at this picture doesn't seem that novel to me. Actually, thinking about the fact that vending machines don't exist on every street corner in America seems kind of baffling. They are everywhere here. Most contain juice, tea, and canned coffee, but I have seen some (rarely) that have food, beer, or cigarettes. To buy the latter two, you need to have a special card verifying your age.


This girl was just a filler DJ who played a short set in between acts, but I really liked her. She didn't smile, didn't dance or move her body a lot, but she was always flicking switches and turning knobs and her music was really nice. I think the best way I could describe her is graceful.



I love airplanes.





This was at the Snow Dog festival in Yuzawa in February.

Snow!


I mean honestly, he's so cute.
He is always going to Shikoku, which is an island of Japan. There is a famous pilgrimage that you can do in Shikoku, visiting over 80 temples and walking for more than 700 miles through the countryside and mountain terrain. I think it took him a couple months to complete it the first time. But when he gets the chance, he goes and does parts of it for a couple weeks, always starting again where he left off. Pretty amazing for anyone - especially a retired old man. I admire his desire to explore his mind through the solitary beating of nature. I am not sure what he's looking for with these pilgrimages, but I hope he finds it.


I went to a concert in Tokyo about a month ago. It was all day with at least 50 DJs playing on four different floors. The other concert pictures in this post are also from that show. Every DJ also had a VJ that played videos during their set. Some played the videos on a variety of small monitors, others on huge backdrops, like this one. I really liked the visual (and extremely creative) representations that accompanied the music. The picture above is of Uyama Hiroto and Haruka Nakamura playing a live Nujabes set. It was so humbling and beautiful to hear and feel the instruments I'd heard in his songs so many times, but by their original creators, live. 

This was another one of the bands/DJs that performed. Most of the DJs were Nujabes-esque, with a chill, jazzy sound, but this group was extremely energetic and dancey. They had about 10-15 of those people in all white suits on stage who were dancing, jumping, and flailing during the whole set. They looked so purely happy that it made everyone else in the room blissfully happy too. At one point, someone from the crowd threw their sweatshirt at one of the white suit people and it hit her in the face. For a split second I wondered if she would be annoyed, but then I saw her peel it off her face and start swinging it around her head with a huge grin. I don't know why, but it made me so happy.


On a totally different take of busy-ness, this is my first glimpse of Cambodia, on my way to my hostel by Tuk Tuk. This was in the capital, Phnom Penh, which was very run down and filled with a huge amount of motorcycles and traffic. Sometimes it is amazing and beautiful for me to think about the fact that the two pictures above can exist simultaneously in the world.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia








Thanks for stopping by. Have a bright day!

Explorations through South East Asia: Malaysia

For a couple weeks in March and April, I had the opportunity to visit Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia (clicking the links will take you to previous posts). Due to my short stay in Malaysia, I only visited one city, Kuala Lumpur. Before moving to Japan, I’m not even sure I’d heard of Kuala Lumpur. Is it famous? I really couldn’t tell you. I’m pretty sure the only reason I learned about it was because it was cheapest to fly from there back to Japan. This is turning into more of a backhanded compliment than I intended. Anyways…the point is that for most of my life, I couldn’t tell you one thing about Malaysia. I didn’t know any of its cities, climate, location, or people. It existed just as well as the settings from the required books I didn’t read in high school – perhaps others knew all about it, but to me, it could be anything, or nothing. Though I now know that Malaysia is home to jungle beds, firefly rivers, and the largest flower in the world, the Rafflesia, I didn’t see any of these things when I visited. Kuala Lumpur, the location I stayed, is more closely related to Los Angeles than the Ferngully scenery you might expect. Unlike Thailand and Cambodia, Kuala Lumpur boasted huge shopping malls, monorails, $8 beers, and even a McDonalds adjacent to my hostel. Now, I realize that city attractions and sky scrapers are just fancy ways to disguise the real purpose of what we can really find within its borders – a community.

Usually when I write my blog posts, I just let out whatever is inside. I don’t do much editing because my thoughts just escape me and editing them feels like they turn into something else. But for some reason, as I write about Malaysia, I can’t seem to focus my attention. I’ve written and re-written this post several times and I still don’t know what I want to say. Perhaps it’s because I’m not sure I can.

What I experienced in Malaysia was one of the purest expressions of human kindness I’ve ever felt. It was like being at a rave, but better – it was real. Sometimes, people would just come up and start chatting with me, both women and men. At first I remember not knowing how to feel about this. Are they trying to steal from me? I’d read a lot before traveling to South East Asia that this happens sometimes. But after we’d part ways and I realized that nothing was taken, I couldn’t help but feel bad about ever doubting their sincerity. Websites can tell you a lot about safety and theft, but they can’t tell you what it feels like when every person you make eye contact with sends you a smile as you walk past them, or to have several groups of people see you with a map in hand and offer to show you the way. Websites, like this one, can explain facts, but they can’t explain human connections. It’s up to us to discover those for ourselves. So perhaps all I can say about Kuala Lumpur is that you should visit it. It may not have rainforest adventures or roaming wild animals, but it is home to some of the kindest people I’ve ever encountered. When I told a friend this, he asked if I took lots of pictures of people smiling. I realized I didn’t take even one. It made me sad for a moment that I didn’t capture the thing that meant most to me. But I guess beauty isn’t always meant to be captured – sometimes it’s just meant to breathe.

Camera: Nikon FM10, Nikon FM2

Film: Portra 160

en route.



Love the colors in that one.



Couldn't quite capture this dragonfly, but I still love this shot. Perhaps because I spent so long staring at this little creature. Its eyes were gigantic.





Jellyfish are so incredible and serene.



I've never seen a butterfly poop before, but as I was getting my camera ready to take a picture of this one, it's butt (the top end) flipped downward and starting pooping. It kind of made me like that butterfly more...it's beautiful and doesn't care about pooping in front of me.

This is at the Batu Caves.

This guy was standing at about a 70 degree angle, butt out as far as it would go, legs spread apart, and arms fully wrapped around the telescope. I admired his intensity.

Ostriches are strange and amazing.

I love birds.