Koi Under the Surface

Life In Japan: #008.2 - Kyoto Fall Foliage [GoPro Version]

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Life In Japan: #008.1 - Kyoto Fall Foliage [Ricoh GRD IV Version]

f5.0, 1/400, ISO 800 / The Kyoto Botanical Garden

f5.6, 1/250, ISO 800 / The Kyoto Botanical Garden

f5.6, 1/250, ISO 800 / Kitano-Tenmangū

f2.8, 1/200, ISO 800 / Kitano-Tenmangū

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Life In Japan: #007 - Ichigaya Photobomb

White Salmon River Rafting

Life in Japan: #006 Morning in Toba City, Mie Prefecture

Life in Japan: #005 - Matsuri

 

Meisa's First Happy Birthday

Life in Japan: #004 - Obon Festival

Obon (お盆) is a summer Buddhist custom that honors the family ancestors. It is believed that the spirits of the ancestors return to visit the living relatives in mid July (August in some places). One of the customs of Obon is the Bon-Odori, or Obon Dancing, where people gather and dance to songs and drums to welcome the spirits. This bon-odori was held in Ikebukuro district of Tokyo while my family was in town. It was an interesting one because it had a modern pop-culture twist to the traditional Bon-Odori.

Life in Japan #003: Tanabata

Tanabata (七夕, "Evening of the Seventh", or Star Festival) is a summer festival that is held in Japan on July 7th, and it celebrates the meeting of two deities, Orihime and Hikoboshi, represented by the stars Altair and Vega. A shortened version of the folklore is that Princess Orihime, the daughter of the God of the heavens and an extremely hard-working seamstress, and Hikoboshi, a cow herder who lived across the heavenly river (Milky Way), fell madly in love with each other to the point where they stopped working. The God of the heavens got angry and forbid them from seeing each other, but finally allowed them to be together once a year on the 7th day of the 7th month. Seeing each other was difficult because of the Milky Way river that was between them, but if the weather was good a flock of birds (magpies, for you bird lovers) came down to serve as a bridge so they can cross the river. If it rained, however, the lovers had to wait another year to see each other. 

A tanabata tradition is to write a wish on a colorful strip of paper and hang them on a branch of bamboo in the hope that the wish will come true. As a child I remember writing wishes at Japanese preschool or maybe even in early grade school so it's been well over 20 years since I thought about this festival. So you can imagine my surprised delight when a package of a few dozen wishes were delivered to me in Japan from Monterey Bay. Extra super special points because the well-wishes were from the students that I painfully had to separate from in order to move across the world to dedicate myself to the type of work I dreamt of doing for over a decade.  

While the tanabata love story is nice, my take on tanabata is about the importance of hard work. Adjusting to life and work in Japan has been a huge challenge, but I'm encouraged because I know that what I'm currently going through is 100% necessary for me to grow professionally and personally. Reading the wishes from you all back home gave me the boost I needed. Thank you guys. We might be separated but I'm looking forward to when I can cross the Pacific Ocean to see you all again. Until then, you are all my driving force to keep moving forward; I hope I am for you as well. #RISEAboveIt 

Life In Japan: #002 - Shikotsu Toya National Park, Hokkaido

Life in Japan: #001

Shopping center in front of Higashi-Nagasaki Station, the closest station to where I currently live.

Hachikō Statue in front of Shibuya Station. Hachikō was a dog that went to this station everyday to meet his owner returning from work. After his master's death, Hachikō continued to commute to the station everyday until his own death 10 years later. This statue was built in honor of his loyalty; it has since become a popular meeting spot, which is what I was doing.

Not sure if they were real monks but they were protesting (by chanting) against self-defense legislation, which they're calling war legislation. The lady on the right was explaining why very politely. So Japanese. 

The infamous Shibuya Scramble Crossing. That's consider light pedestrian traffic. You should see it on a weekend evening.

Secret vantage point of the Shibuya Scramble Crossing. 🙊

Waimanalo, Oahu

#SessionInaNutshell: 05-06-2016

#SessionInaNutshell 04-09-2016

#RouicohJournal: March 14, 2016 - San Francisco Suspension

#RouicohJournal: January ~ February 2016

I decided to purchase the Ricoh GRD IV (used) because even though I liked my Nikon D5100 DSLR, it's bulk and weight demotivated me from actually carrying the camera and lens around on a daily basis. Even on trips, I started to really dislike having to carry a designated bag for my camera gear. This Ricoh fits in my pocket easily and has a lot of features and manual settings that make it a challenging but rewarding camera to play with. To motivate me to have the camera on me at all times, I will keep up a photo-journal here under the tag #RouicohJournal. Here's some from the January and February.

January 22nd, 2016: First Portrait.

January 26th, 2016: Ravi Coltrane is the saxophonist here and he is legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane's son. We caught his show on a random January weeknight at Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz. We were definitely within top 5 of the youngest people in the crowd.

January 28th, 2016: Mom's birthday: I drove down to my hometown because I was receiving chemotherapy for my testicular cancer treatment. (For those who don't know, I was diagnosed with stage 1 testicular cancer in early December and had surgery to get it out). My chemo treatment wasn't until February 4th, but I decided to drive home early in time for my mom's birthday.  Flowers from dad and an assortment of Bodega Louie eclairs instead of cake. Happy family.



February 11, 2016: Silhouette of a jacaranda tree on Grevelia Street, South Pasadena. Taken exactly a week after receiving chemotherapy treatment. I was down and out with the post-chemo blues for 4~5 days before this, and I was finally feeling well enough to go on a walk. The day after this, my chemo symptoms returned in full force and I was back down for a few days.



February 19th, 2016: Boy, Band at South Pasadena Farmer's Market. This picture is an homage to a photo I took at this farmer's market over 10 years ago when I first started dabbling in photography. That one was of a boy and girl, probably similar age as the kid in this photo, and they were holding hand and twirling in circles as a lone guitarist  performed some funky jams. I have the print somewhere, I'll post it if I find it.



February 20, 2016: Lazy dogs in the sun. By this point I was finally feeling normal after 2 weeks of recovering from chemotherapy. Like the dog, I had to stretch out my stiff body after laying around for a long time.


February 28th, 2016: Pacific Biological Laboratories Tour. This is the building where Doc Ed Ricketts where he conducted his studies of the biodiversity of the Monterey Bay ocean. After his death in 1948 (he was struck by a train after his car broke down on the train tracks few blocks from the lab), his friends continued to use the space for meetings and socials, eventually organizing what is now the Monterey Bay Blues Festival, which they actually held in this small building at a certain point. Here's the Ed Ricketts historian daydreaming about Doc.

#SessionInaNutshell - 2/28/16

Fun little edit from last weekend in Santa Cruz. I love this edit because I've been wanting to use this song in a video for almost 3 years but it just didn't work with everything else. I knew something would come along. Bip Bop Bip.

#Rouicoh: San Gabriel Eyes

Moments: Tahoe January 2010

Whales at Seymour Marine Discovery Center

Seymour Marine Discovery Center is a place that is easy to miss, being located along the barren Santa Cruz cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It's one of my favorite locations in Monterey Bay because the exhibits in their visitor's center have a strong emphases in sharing the real, unique research done by UC Santa Cruz's Institute of Marine Sciences researchers and other affiliate research groups. And they have real skeletal structures of a blue whale and humpback whale on their grounds. The blue whale one is 87-foot long and supposedly the largest real skeletons of any kind displayed anywhere in the world. The photo taken inside the rib cage belonged to a smaller gray whale.

Small Kine Barrel