autumn tactics

The Great Buddha of Kamakura, Kenpou kinenbi (Constitution Memorial Day) 2005.

Standing at 13.35 meters tall, it is the second largest Buddha statue in Japan (the first being the one near my home in Nara). The statue was made in 1252 during the Kamakura bakufu (shogunate) and originally located within a temple, but a tidal wave washed away the wooden housing during the 15th century and now the Buddha rests tranquilly in the open air.

Late model Corvette C3 with well-used tires.

I took this picture on one of my grand trips to Saitama, this time in February 2005. I am fascinated with transportation, and have a deep sense of romance when it comes to old cars, motorcycles, and bikes. The curves speak to me on a subliminal level. This attraction may be lost on most of my audience, but I have just spent the last half hour trying to decide which shot of this car to choose for today’s entry (there are about twenty). Sorry.

Music is pleasing for a variety of reasons. Long ago, it was certainly a primitive form of expression, used to celebrate happy events. We are rhythmic creatures, that is for sure. However, our emotions have evolved and the music can hold so much more than just instinctual urges to move in time. A song may catch our attention because of the sound, but it may also be the situation in which we heard it: our favorite movie’s closing theme, the last dance at our high school prom, or an album borrowed the first summer we were really out on our own.

As time passes, the song means more. Humans are again, inherently nostalgic, and we reflect on the past with deeply set ardor. The more time passes, the more the memory changes, growing simpler and more vague, yet more concentrated: like a stone worn smooth from ages of being tossed in the surf. These broken-in memories may grow rosier, or more painful, melting into condensed morsels of spirit. Like anything else, we love variety in our memories. And so as the decades roll by, our few precious moments grow into a glistening bucket of marbled time, and all it takes is one random appearance in a shuffled playlist to bring all that glory charging back unbridled. It’s pungent. It’s warm. It’s corny and dated like we are, and it’s the best medicine in the world for channeling our hearts into the kind of places where great things can happen.

[When I was about eight years old I played Starship's We Built this Cityso many times I about wore the needle off my Fisher-Price record player. I didn't know what it meant, but it was cool, and I danced all over my playroom for hours listening to it.]

#define BIG_NUMBER 1.0E+18F

I don’t usually take pictures of people, mainly because a) I have a lack of interesting people who will pose for me, and b) I’m not very good at it. But sometimes, just sometimes, I can grab a bit of a moment that was shared: laughter, or worry, or love.

It’s something I want to work on, but I think I need to be able to get over my foolish, human-manufactured obstacles like awkwardness and lack of confidence, while developing my empathy and ability to connect with people instantly; less twenty-first century paranoia and more timeless Dalai Lama.

So far the majority of the photographs have been taken in Meguro-ku, though this time it was a full two years ago, so least there is temporal variance. New Year’s 2005 was when I travelled to Akita, so the couple days before our trip out I took advantage of the time off and rode my bike from Shinjuku in the unusual direction of south, towards Tokyo Bay. This would be only the second time I’d take the Meguro river down the southwest side of central Tokyo, though now it’s a daily occurrence.

This building was lit very oddly, as the super clean glass facade of an office building across the river reflected incredibly concentrated light onto the wooden exterior, making it look like my camera had some weird kind of CCD anomaly. Anyway, this picture doesn’t look like much since digital photographs and computer monitors can only reproduce a fraction of the contrast the human eye can take in, so just try to imagine something vaguely like this but with light about three times brighter and seemingly coming out of nowhere. Maybe you can get an idea of the sort of captivated wonder and excitement that I felt in seeing this happen.

Sega arcade and slot parlor near Akihabara station on Chuo dori, taken on one of my longest day trips around Tokyo: a fantastic eight hour journey in June of 2004 to Okubo, Kagurazaka, Kourakuen, Nihonbashi, Aoyama Cemetery, and Yoyogi. It was hard just selecting one photograph from the excursion to show here, and I almost broke pace and put two up. However, the tie-breaker was that this shot had a lot more contrast with yesterday’s submission.

That that year I would go into the game center and win on two easy coins a couple of what are now my most cherished bedside friends (see final picture in this post).

[After a quick google to check some spelling, I noticed that this blog shows up twice near the top of the search results. The worse thing is I've actually misrepresented Aoyama Cemetery as Nogizaka Cemetery, both times. So much for being an authority on Tokyo. Check your facts, Jack!]

Looking down into Nagano-ken from Kitashiga, February 2004.

This was my first real test of the PowerShot S50, which I acquired in late January after having my Exilim stolen off the Yamanote line. In retrospect it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me, since it forced me to buy a half-decent camera. Looking back at the images taken with the Casio now just makes me cringe, probably the same way I’ll cringe looking at shots like this once I finally give in and buy a digital SLR.

Still, fairly clear, smooth toned images like this one are indicative of the superior quality I’ve come to expect from Canon. This was also the first time I’d been skiing since my ill-fated inaugural foray at Alta in Salt Lake, which resulted in a concussion and several days in bed. This time I got another concussion, but it was slight and I had enough fun to make me want to keep trying, which like most painful lessons, is just about the best kind you can ask for.

Through suffering we find happiness.

Apartment building in Nakameguro just south of my office on Yamate dori; also taken in the weeks before Geisai.

I like Konica Minolta Centuria Super 400 because it gives pretty punchy colors for negative film. Blues, yellows, and reds are well-separated and heavily saturated, giving the images, to my mind, a primary look which reminds me of grade school. Five rolls were included with my scanner. It’s too bad that the company has stopped manufacturing all 35 mm camera products. The only stock left is what’s in the stores now, so it seems that the film will only live on in professionals’ refrigerators after January or so. I have about twenty rolls on hand in my kitchen at the moment.

The key to 30-day trials is consistency. I think in the end, consistency is a lot more difficult than a handful of herculean fits. It’s more respectable, and requires more discipline. If you run every day for twenty minutes for a month, it is much more admirable than four hours on a Saturday or two.

Since this month I am a) not playing games, and b) not eating after ten o’clock, I figure I need to balance out all this not doing stuff with a little something. So each day this month, I will post a photograph I’ve taken, at a fairly decent size here in the blog directly, perhaps with a comment, perhaps just by itself. Think of it as your daily glance through my eyes, like looking out the window on your way to work, except every twenty four hours outside is a completely different spatial location. Something like tags or categories would make this more manageable.

Anyway, here’s December 1st:

This was taken a couple weeks before Geisai 10, somewhere between Ebisu and Nakameguro. I didn’t get the film developed until after the show, so it didn’t make the cut. Next time, though.

Tonight I went to see the opening of Casino Royale tonight, and as I expected, it well worth the price of admission. Reserve tickets sold out the day before, and we barely got seats for the evening show, ending up in the third row. Still, it was fabulous and as my co-worker said while we waited for the subway home, I looked “very satisfied.” I’ll be going back to see it at least one more time, it’s not often that I have a chance to enjoy a movie in Tokyo, since everything is at least fifteen dollars a ticket.

Don’t fuck with me, I’m back in force.

Today is the first of December, and the start of a lot of things. Recently I’ve been making a lot of notes to myself about how I want to do things different for the last four, three, two, one months of the year, but despite recent general stagnancy, things will certainly be colorful for the next thirty-one days. I’ve given all of my memory cards to Rob for safe keeping, which means that I won’t be playing any games for a while. I’ve also imposed a “no food after ten p.m.” rule on myself, in an attempt to improve the quality of my sleep (and diet). Mothers tell their children in Japan, “Tabete kara nereba ushi ni narimasu yo“, which essentially means that people who fall asleep after eating will turn into cows. As I can’t think of any bovine qualities that are sexy, all the more reason to give up such nonsense, even if I do work until eleven at night. This just means I’ll have to cook more healthy meals to be consumed at dinner (albeit in front of my keyboard).

This weekend I’m decorating the tree (the same golden cupressus for the third consecutive year). Sunday I’m going to try and unload a mass of clothes and media at the village bazaar, and then try my hand at pottery. Next weekend there is a rave in a tunnel (yes) in Shizuoka, and the following weekend I am running in an ekiden (relay race), so starting on Monday I’m training to get my 3000 meter time to as close to ten minutes as possible. I’m wishing now that I’d gotten my Prefontaine video back from Nana before she stopped talking to me. After my run, on the 21st I’m slated to have a day off, which I may work a weekend for, since I have big secret plans for that day.

In between all this, I have a bunch of content upgrades coming down the pike which are set to go live by New Year’s. That’s my Christmas present to you, though, so I won’t spoil what it involves.

But what am I doing for the abbreviated winter holiday this year? Will I go to Vietnam at the last minute? Will I hitchhike to Aomori? Will I hole up at home like I did six winters before and work my tail off fabricating artifacts indicative of my future potential, that I may springboard into the next big phase of my life? Well, you know me…

The coldest blood runs through my veins
You know my name