Colours (2)

I take it all back. Kyoto can be beautiful.

Colours (1)

Bank Holiday

It rains on bank holidays in Japan too.

I have a cold. Sat in front of the heater watching a documentary about the animation director Miyasaki Hayao on TV. He creates one character in each of his movies that reminds him of his mother. The documentary showed him at great pains to complete a scene with this mother figure to his satisfaction and I watched, impressed that while he could have drawn anything, he took days to decide what should happen.

Karaoke Time

That Autumn Feeling

A visit to Shirakawa park in Nagoya this time last year with a friend. The apartment buildings that loom over the north side distract from the carefully sculpted 'au naturelle' ideal of Japanese garden. And so, like unadventurous escapists, we faced inwards.

House Guest

He came, he chased,slept, sat and purred, and went again.

In Hot Water

A nice article in one of the local (National - how rude!) English language rags about the importance of hot baths for the Japanese.

When my father came to Japan for the first time we took him to see Kenrokuen, a famous garden, in Kanazawa. After that and the 'Ninja Temple' we stayed in a Ryokan hotel for a night. Dad had about 3 minutes in the hotel's public bath before calling it a night.

Why are Japanese baths so hot? Find one writers opinion here.

Godzilla Sings The Blues

This outside for a change. Dark though.

The south exit of Kanayama station Nagoya is a gathering place for those with instruments to play or dances to dance. I have become to blaze about the experience I suppose. Many of them are terrible to tell the truth.

But it's not just the music, it's the people that stay and listen. Mostly high school girls with their short-skirted bare legs wrapped in Disney motif fleece quilts against the cold. Stay on the fringes.

In the middle of those around me

Still subterranean...

Platform

Recently, time out-doors is regularly spent underground in subways and underground shopping malls going from A to B (and back via C if lucky).

Just occasionally, there is a lull or a surge in the crowd, someone steps into a frame they didn't realize existed and 'click' goes the shutter.