31 with a bang

With a summer birthday in Tokyo, I decided to invite a bunch of friends for a fireworks picnic party last night. Although there were a few tense raindrop moments, it turned out to be a very nice evening! (Thanks to all of you who attended!)

Of course, with the new camera, I HAD to take some photos. Looking over the photos this morning, I've discovered a few cardinal rules about fireworks. What follows is the result of a careful analysis.

Why You Shouldn't Photograph Fireworks

1. Fireworks happen at night. You didn't buy that $5000 reconnaissance camera, so you can't take photos at night. Remember that flash that always comes on? Well you can't use that for fireworks.
2. Photos don't move. No expansion, no fast-then-slow, no glittery falling things, no wandering after-effect spinny bits (which are my favorites)
3. They're far away. You're a sane person, and you elected not to sit directly underneath kilogram upon kilogram of speeding, fiery, gunpowder boom-ness for a reason. Sure, you can try the zoom, but I refer you to item #1.
   

4. Your hand shakes. For fuzzy bits, (above) it might look OK, but in general it looks weird (below). On the plus side, you're still alive, 'cause the leading cause for camera jitter is your heart beating.
   

5. You don't want to be one of those geeks who carries a huge tripod around. You're quite satisfied to be an entirely different kind of geek. (Namely, a type of geek who isn't strong enough to carry around said tripod.)
   

6. The tripod you ARE geeky enough to carry is too small. Still, the above was the best photo I got of the fireworks. After a while I kinda like the look of the people in silhouette at the bottom. If only I knew who those people where...
   

7. Everyone else is enjoying a pleasant outdoor experience, and you're staring at a small TV screen in front of your face.

...But, I wasn't the only one staring at a screen: a shot I didn't have time to grab was at 30 degrees to the right or left. You could see a sea of dim lights, as people tried to capture the moment on their cell phones or digital cameras. In Japan it's become second nature to grab the camera any time there's a touching moment. But in hind sight, I wonder if some things are better enjoyed with the electronic equipment turned off. Especially for something as difficult to capture as fireworks..

stork visited me

Happy Birthday, everyone! As a gift to myself for finally going senile, I lost my camera and bought a new one. The camera is dead, long live the camera, and therefore we hereby announce a new family member. The differences are black and white.



And no, when I say "black and white" I'm not making a clever reference to the kind of pictures they take. I literally mean the color of the camera. Other than that, it's almost the same camera. ...But hopefully white is harder to loose. Same logic applies to the yellow case.

And I'll be sure and tell you when I do loose this one, so we can keep accurate records. Let's see.. I wrote about the previous camera on October 16, and I lost it 3 days ago. So it lasted 9 months. ... eh.. *gack* Even the euphoria from buying new toys can't quell that one. Well, one can hope that it turns up, but..

Since no camera is actually useful out of the box, I also picked up a SD Memory card. But this time I got a snazzy one which folds in half so you can read it in a standard USB drive. (In the see-through case, just left of the camera above.) All-in-one, multi-compatible stuff like that really geeks me out. ..In a warm and fuzzy good way, that is.



And, like last time, I also purchased a clear plastic sticker to protect the screen from scratches. The above shot is me applying the "PU-RO-TE-KU-TAA" to the camera. Ya see, when I loose my camera, I want the person who finds it to be able to peel off the protector and have a scratch-free surface. I'm just considerate like that.

...

In all seriousness, normally I wouldn't buy a camera so soon after loosing the last one, but tomorrow bright and early I'm going on a trip to the foothills near Mt. Fuji. Photo op! So I need a camera. .. Look forward to a picture-filled post next time! Cheers

オノマトペー, Japanese onomatopoeia

If you know the green t-shirt I have (and love) with the above "hi jou guchi" emergency exit sign, then you know something I bought from a cool online store. It's a company run by an entrepreneurial American that imports wacky Japanese stuff to Japan fanatics, mostly back to the US. He's actually a good writer, and I was reminded by the influence he had on my image of Japan after reading the "store news" email that's sent to customers. Here's a snippet:

I've always been fascinated with onomatopoeia in Japanese, with the differences in how "sound words" work between Japanese and English. Animal noises like "woof woof" (in Japanese: wan wan) are different, of course, but the mechanisms are the same, as with other words, like "twinkle twinkle" (kira kira) or "drip drop" (potsun potsun). The Japanese also assign sounds to odd actions, which we would never think of creating. The "sound" of eyes looking left and right is "kyoro kyoro," and this term is applied to a guy who is being unfaithful to his girlfriend by looking at other girls. The sound of snow falling has a sound word, too, "shin shin" ("sheen sheen") which summons up pleasant images of whiteness outside a frosty window. There is a "sound of silence" in Japanese, too, which is "shiiin" ("sheen," with a lengthened vowel). When someone makes a joke that isn't funny, it's common for someone to crack wise by saying "Shiiin!" to highlight the lack of laughter from the first person's joke. It takes time to get used to concepts such as these, but it's all part of the wonderful mystery that is Japan.

The company is J-Box, and they have lots of interesting-to-strange stuff. But a word of warning: J-Box's parent site is J-List, which is aimed at foaming-at-the-mouth college boys. It's hard to find a T-shirt without some kind of sexual connotation. If you surf J-Box long enough you may be inadvertently switched to J-List.

Interestingly, because of the "over 18" content there, J-List is blocked to me from here in Japan, even though I can walk 100 yards to any convienence store and find worse! Still, J-Box is highly recommended. Especially when it comes to buying me gifts. :)

World Cup = OVER

For me, the fact that it's over is more important than who won. :) Well, sort of.


Italians cheer, Frenchmen leer

I've been watching the world cup (especially the first round games, when the US Men's National Team still had a [theoretical] chance) at an English pub near my apartment. And because 1) the USA and Italia were in the same first round group, 2) I'm the only American strange enough to be a soccer fan, 3) my Italian officemate is a soccer NUT (like 90% of Italians), it's been a fun few weeks.

However, it's wrecked havoc on my sleep schedule. Today/Yesterday/Whatever, I slept from 10:30pm - 3:30am. That's a problem, because the game started at 3. My alarm was apparently sounding (loudly) for an hour from 2:30, but I was totally oblivious to it. For most of the games I would simply stay up without sleeping, but I was tired today from having played... soccer.

The final game tonight was OK, but not excellent. I missed the first half, which apparently was better. They got tired. We were tired, being 4am, so it was understandable. Eventually, with the score at 1:1, and the French star Zidane going insane (what a way to be remembered: responding to provocation with a blatant head-butt-to-a-tall-guy's-sternum), Italia won on free kicks. We were all celebrating Italia style (above picture).

But what was interesting to me was the below picture.


Photos with Italian Flag: 100Yen

Many Japanese were equally as enthusiastic as the Italians, and many people wanted to have photos with the Italian flags that instantaneously appeared after the last shot.

I'm not surprised by the desire to join the crowd, because after all I was rooting for Italia as well. (Why? They beat us in the first round. So now my claims that we had a hard group are justified--I can say "We lost to the world champions!!" I guess that's kind of like getting 5th or 6th place.)

The level of enthusiasm was surprising. Through the series, I noticed a lot of Japanese rooting for whoever was winning--the mood of the moment, and especially the passion of the Europeans watching was the main thing. I suspect "feeling the moment" was the reason that most of the Japanese kids there chose to watch at an English Pub. Japanese soccer nuts are moderately few, greatly outnumbered by baseball nuts and equal in number as F1 nuts, golf nuts, and tennis nuts. For my American audience, think hockey fans. (Diehard but not the biggest group.)

..anyway, the World Cup ended on a good note: the silver lining from being late for the game is that I'm awake. I'm off to work. Ciao

3 Tokyo Snapshots

Indoor World Cup Mock-Field TV cafe

Wish I'd known about this before today! Also, wish it was closer to home for that dazed 6am shuffle back home.



Where's Japan-ish?

Zoom in to count how many "Only in Japan" items are pictured here. I count at least 4. (And no, it's not raining!) (... or even sunny.)



Green breath

And lastly, another Engrish gem. I found this one on the back of a restaurant's point card. (Very popular with new restaurants and hair salons, to cultivate steady customers.) Interestingly, the restaurant is about 1 month old, and not named "The Leaf"