A cleaner Paris for Yu and Ai

This photograph from the Raw Japan blog by Reuters shows a Japanese volunteer holding out rubbish collected from the streets of Paris.
Not another fetish. The volunteers just seemed to think it could be cleaner. I suppose it could.

The Reuters blog offers an interesting range of Japan based stories, and a wide range of blogs on other areas.

Arrows

Succeoの皆さん、一年間ありがとうございました。（ちょっと遅いけど、ね）

Spring comes to the garden

R U KY?

Was asked how to say "KY" in English (as English as those letters may seem, they are also used in Japanese). Interesting article here about the acronym culture in young Japan.

Be Prepared

It has been beautiful for the past few days. You can feel the hot summer coming, but it's not here yet and neither are the insects.

As the season changes, we change the contents of our emergency backpacks. These are the bags that we hope we will have a chance to grab after the quake that we hope our building is strong enough to stand up to.

Lighter clothes, a change of bottled water, larger nappies and dammit, I forgot the bottle of Scotch!

Mochi

An evangelist meeting? Day of the dead? Not at all. On the day when a North Korean missile was fired over the north of Japan, a small town in Aichi had a Mochi catching festival..

Mochi is cooked rice beaten into a thick paste and formed into small cakes. Today's festival was held at a local shrine where local people gathered to catch mochi cakes which were thrown from a raised stage.

I went to the Honen Festival a few years ago and as rock hard mochi rained down from the skies, someone grabbed my shell toe trainers thinking they were mochi and nearly sent me flying. These events get a little hectic.

As the crowd dispersed and the last mochi bagged, we noticed that one bag of mochi was stuck in a tree. Some very energetic throwing. It was a vary happy young farmer's son who caught them when they were eventually prised free.

Nice To Meet You

This is a self introduction from a friend Ben.
はじめまして。
benと言います。
私のblogは何気ない日常を切り取った写真を載せています。
気ままに知らない街を散歩しするのがとても楽しみです。
たまにイラストも描いています。
blogからリンクしてますので、ぜひ覗いてみてください。
コメント大歓迎です。
Hi.
I'm Ben.
My photo's are from my wanderings around town. I also have an illustration blog which is linked to the photo blog. Please have a look and make a comment.
See Ben's photos HERE.

Dusky

Smorgasbord Of The Day

Lens/sensor dirt on blossom shot. Time to clone! Today was a dash from a meeting at school to meet the photography club members and their multitude of cameras. Some nice shots, some so-so, but the real highlight of the day was chatting to four elementary schoolgirls who wanted to see my photos of the carp.

"Say something in English!"

"(in english) O.K... What do you want me to say?"

"What does that mean?"

"It means 'What do you want me to say'."

"I don't understand. Are you foreign?"

Fantastic! I worked for five years in Japanese Elementary schools and had forgotten how enjoyable it is talking to that age group.

Thank you, Esther.

My sister told me that it was impossible to see the one that got away in the last post with the picture at such a small size. Here is a blow-up.

While I was using the photo software to trim the picture, I thought I'd give the auto adjust feature a whirl and this is what came out.
After looking at this, the original seems very dull. A bit like living on un-seasoned potatoes for years then discovering cup noodle. The MSG of the photography world, which a nature photographer friend swears that they never use.

The one that got away...

Look carefully.
Taken in Central park (a stip of concrete with some water and trees and a damn big tower) in the middle of Nagoya yesterday.