I’ve really enjoyed posting to Flickr recently, and it is updated very often. For now, that will be where all my stuff goes.

Interestingly, just as I’ve given up on my life being exciting and blog-worthy, I’m about to embark on a potentially exciting and interesting life adventure. We’ll see how it goes, but I could see myself starting up a new blog in the near future. Stay tuned. For now, keep checking http://www.flickr.com/photos/benduchac/ - I’ll be posting, and looking for comments.

First up, I was meeting family in Chinatown and got there about half an hour early, so I spent the time walking around with my camera, taking pictures of stores and restaurants. Here are a few I liked.

I like this place because it has no English name. Makes me want to try it out.

Fresh veggies! I never shop in Chinatown, although every time I’m there I think to myself that I should.

This is about as typical as Chinatown views get.

I like this picture best. Each little tank of fish is like a little framed picture. The three across the bottom make a nice little triptych.

I took the Chinatown pictures in mid-December, and other than various concerts and parties, I didn’t shoot much else until the holidays. We have a huge holiday party every Christmas Eve, but I actually didn’t take any great pictures at the party, so here are some before and afters.

This is actually a picture from Christmas Eve day. I got up around 10 in the morning to go help the family set up for the big party, and as I was leaving my apartment I noticed the sun shining in through the back door and hitting our old worn-out garden door. I took about five pictures (another one here) and then went to help out.

Neko came to help too (she sat on a stool and sniffed for food.)

The party happened, and it was great as usual. The house was full of people, the Christmas tree was decorated, and since we’ve been doing this every year for as long as I can remember, it finally felt like Christmas. Much egg nogg, beer, and ham was consumed.

Neko actually made herself scarce for the party - she’s more of a chill kind of girl, not so much into big crowds. Dinner parties are more her scene. Once most of the people left and there were just a few friends left, she came up for some holiday relaxation.

Of course, she’s not relaxing in this picture - she’s about to attack Ben Popper’s hand.

And to round it out (I know, I barely wrote anything this time) here are a couple pictures of family time after the Christmas madness was over.

Maud and mom at MoMA.

And Leila and Maud at the Koreans around the corner. They were buying… ice cream? Orange juice? I really can’t remember, but I like this picture of them, and it was good to have the girls back in town, even if it was just for a few days.

Further photo-ization on Flickr, as usual.

(Extra photos are here on Flickr, as usual)

In the comments on the last post, Leila asked me if those shiny Tachiuo fish were tasty. I am glad to report that they are. This was my breakfast the next day:

A brief explanation. One of the things that we discussed a lot while I was living with the Nakamuras was the Japanese concept of “western” food. There are some classic “western” dishes that are common all over Japan, but the thing is that they aren’t found anywhere in the west. One of them is “omurice” - a rice omelet. The only way to explain it is a thin sheet of egg wrapped around rice that has been mixed with ketchup and pieces of hot dog, with ketchup on top. I said I had never had a rice omelet, and Fumiko said she would make them for Mori and I for breakfast. As you can see, mine says Ben, and (you’re going to have to trust me on this one) Mori’s says Moriyuki - which is his full name. How was the omurice? Truth be told, it was pretty tasty. Also served for breakfast are a whole Aji - the little fish we caught, and sections of Tachiuo - see how even after it is chopped up and cooked it still shines? Nice job, fish.

It was Thursday the 18th, my ticket home was for the 20th, and as you can see, it was a beautiful day. Mori had some stuff to do that day, so we got up early to collect some Anago (sea eel) traps. Unfortunately, as we were out, the boat broke. The little 5 horsepower engine on the boat was shot - possibly the clutch, maybe the screw, but at low RPMs the engine would just quit, and if you gave it some gas, it would rev until the entire engine was rattling and shaking and making terrible noises, and the boat wouldn’t move much faster than a normal person would walk. I was in charge of driving us around as Mori worked the traps, and as you can see, I was not confident that we would get home.

That is the boat, going flat out as fast as it can go. You may notice we aren’t creating any wake at all. A rowboat goes faster than we were.

While I was trying to figure out how to put the boat into gear without stalling the engine, Mori was hauling in traps, most of which were empty, some of which had Anago in them, and one that had a little octopus in it. If I learned one thing in all my time out on the inland sea with Mori, it’s that octopuses (octopi?) are smart. They will let themselves into a trap, eat everything you’ve caught, and then go right back out the door, leaving a pile of bones and shells. This one must have been eating, because as Mori pulled it up, it was pulling itself out of the trap - but Mori grabbed it.

After the fishing in the morning, I can’t remember exactly what we did. I think Mori had to work, and I may have gone out on my own again. I only took a few pictures, and they are of hanging around in Mori’s house, so maybe I did nothing? I’m not sure.

That night though, I went to photograph Graham at his nightly Judo practice. I took a boatload of pictures, but Graham already did a post about Judo, and since he actually knows what Judo is all about, I’ll just send you over there. My pictures are the ones in the second half of the post. While we were at the gym, though (at the maritime college on the island) the Kendo team was practicing right next to us. Kendo is the Japanese sword-based martial art, and in case you didn’t know, they wear the coolest protective gear around.

I think everyone should have an outfit like this - so versatile! Especially good for walking in bad neighborhoods at night.

All the Judo team’s awards, up on the wall - there’s just something about official Japanese paperwork - they know how to do it right.

That night we had yet another delicious dinner at Mori’s house, we stayed up late watching TV and reading (or, in my case, looking at the pictures in) manga, Mori and I went out for a drive, and then I went to bed. Friday rolled around, and somehow my last full day in Japan was upon us and I had just gotten comfortable. Mori and Fumiko had no plans for the day, and Hiroko got the day off, so we looked at a map and tried to find a fun place to go and spend our last day. Over breakfast of fish, miso soup, and rice, we decided to go to Onomichi.

Onomichi is a city in eastern Hiroshima, well known for its windy paths and streets leading up a mountainside that is dotted with old houses and temples. Recently, Onomichi has fallen on hard times due to depopulation - one day while we were all watching TV, we saw a report about how Onomichi was becoming like a ghost town, with long shots of empty streets and decaying houses. This led Mori to tell me that Onomichi had become very scary, which led me to ask him if we could go. In the end we did go, piling back into my rental Demio and catching the ferry.

Team Road Trip Japan, getting started with our usual pre-trip routines: Green tea, silly stretches, and back massages. I know I said I wouldn’t go one about this any more, but look in the background - we’re just commuting, and across the calm water is some little town perched on the side of a mountainous island. I need more of that in my life. More stunning commutes on boats.

The ferry parking lanes. I kept meaning to take this picture while I was living in Japan, but I never did. Good thing I went back.

We got into Onomichi around lunch time, and the first thing I noticed was the castle. Onomichi-jo is a pretty classic feudal Japanese castle, placed up on top of a little mountain to be inaccessible to invaders and also to provide wonderful views and the like - but in Onomichi, they didn’t just let the mountain do the work, they also gave the castle the silliest foundation imaginable. Look:

Can we just talk about how that castle looks like some sort of giant mushroom? The above-ground foundation is practically as tall as the castle itself! I also kind of love how there is a hotel right next door to it. You know, it probably looked a lot less silly when there was no city crammed all around it - maybe it was up high to see over the trees. Now though - silly.

Onomichi is known for a special kind of chinese-stlye ramen, and has a few ramen shops that are famous for this ramen. On this random rainy Friday we ended up having to walk away from two different shops because the line was too long. We finally spotted another one with just a couple people in front, so we got on line. About five seconds after we did that, probably 15 business men came around the corner and got on line behind us. That’s always a good feeling.

The ramen shop was so small that if I had taken out my camera to take a picture, I probably would have been sticking it into someone else’s soup, so I refrained. It was a tiny hole-in-the-wall, a single counter with about ten seats, and an older couple behind the counter making soup after delicious soup. I just read an article last week that talked about a chef who had spent time in Japan and described Japanese food culture as the most interesting and wonderful food culture anywhere in the world. I think I agree. We eat a lot of good food in the States, no doubt, but in Japan it’s different. Food is tied to places, to seasons, to events, and the variety is almost endless. Onomichi is a two hour drive from Hiroshima city, and yet they have their own distinct type of ramen, and they have a handful of restaurants that specialize in just that, and they do it well.

After lunch: The cable car up to the top of the mountain.

Mori demonstrates what he’s going to do when he sees something amazing.

What actually happened when Mori saw something amazing.

On our way up.

I just realized that in all the pictures I picked, both for Flickr and this post, I left out all of the pictures looking back down from the top of the mountain - you’re going to have to trust me - it was a giant urban vista of a valley covered in little houses with a river running through the middle of it. It was kind of foggy out, and the pictures I have are really not terribly interesting. When we got to the top we had a choice of a number of different paths down the mountain. We ended up taking the Path of Literature.

My favorite thing about this sign is how they want to make sure that you realize that the route is not directly to the right - you’re going to have to go around something first. When you actually looked at the path though, the object you were detouring around was a stone about three feet around. Then you just go off to the right.

Mori, doing an update of the last picture in this post.

At one of the temples on the way down, Hiroko and I got fortunes. Hiroko translated mine - it told me that I would soon have some new prospects on the romance front, and that I should be honest with my parents about it, or it might blow up in my face. I decided that was all right advice, and I am following it. Still waiting for the new prospects, though. We tied our fortunes on the tree and went on down the mountain. Another thing I had always wanted to do but had never done when I was living in Japan. See how productive I was?

On the Path of Literature. These are the old narrow winding stair/streets that Onomichi is famous for.

We spent probably four or five hours in Onomichi, and then we drove home along the water. It was weird, knowing it was my last night in Japan - again. I had been through the super-traumatic leaving once already, and even though it was more than a year ago, I still remember how it felt. Getting emotionally ready to leave again was the exact same as getting ready to leave the first time, but on a smaller scale. I felt the same turmoil of emotions, the same sudden need to do and see all the things I hadn’t done yet, the same sudden thoughts of buying a house and moving to Japan. As we drove home during this beautiful sunset, I had this familiar feeling where suddenly I realize that everything was the last. The last time I took the ferry to the island. The last time I was going to have dinner with the Nakamuras, the last chance to drive recklessly around the little island roads, the last sunset seen from the dock where Mori skates. When I have that feeling, I start trying to remember everything. The way the that island looks from this road, the way the air smells, the sound of the ferry bumping up against the dock. The smell of Mori’s Mild Seven cigarettes. Everything takes on this added nostalgic value, just because I know that in a few hours it will all be far away and soon forgotten. It’s never an easy feeling, but in some ways I think it is a good thing. When I go through all that, I know that I’ve got a real connection to the island and to my friends. I know that it’s more than just a vacation, and that is a comfort. I know that I’ll be back.

Hiroko and I riding the ferry. I have such love for the ferry, god knows why. It’s a slow boat that adds a half hour to your trip every time, but there’s just something about taking the ferry that I love.

We had another great dinner of shabu shabu (anothing thing that I had never tried while I lived in Japan - check.) and everyone was kind of quiet after dinner. I didn’t know what was going on, if I had done something wrong, or worse, forgotten to do something right, but Mori and I went out for a long drive after dinner and he said everyone was just a little sad that I was going home, thinking about my time staying with them, about the wedding and all the stuff we had done. I guess that my leaving was sort of the final part of the wedding celebration being over. Once I went home it was back to business as usual. It was really great to go out for that drive with Mori on that last night. We talked about everything - something that is not always easy to do when a close friend gets married - I love hanging out with Mori and Fumiko, but it’s certainly different than hanging out and talking with just Mori. It was a little sad and mostly nice, a reminder of how good a friend he really is. When I first met him in August of 2005 he was single, and I remember him coming over to my house in October and telling me that he had met a really cute girl in Hiroshima, and that he would like her to be his girlfriend. It’s a good feeling to see something like that work out in the end, and when we got back to his house and stretched out on the floor in his new house with Fumiko relaxing and watching TV, I couldn’t be happier for them. We said good night, and I got into my extremely comfy futon for the last night.

The next morning, getting ready to go, my mother’s wedding present hanging on the wall.

And then before I knew it, I was on my way to the ferry port, the same old emotions fighting for attention. The fifteen minute wait for the ferry felt like all of about twenty seconds, and then I was rolling onto the boat and watching Mori and Fumiko recede into the distance for the second time.

(They are on the left, standing in front of that white building)

Leaving on the ferry this time was different this time. Last time all I could think as the boat pulled away was that I would never be able to really go back. I was leaving a life where I had my own house, a car and a scooter, a job, friends - and the only thing I could think was that if I ever went back, I could visit, but I could never have the life back. What I realized this time was that while I might not be able to move back into the apartment where I used to live, the Nakamuras will always be welcoming and kind, and that if I ever do want to go back and do the things I love and see the people I miss, for as long as I want, I can. That totally changed how I felt as the island slipped away. The last time I was inconsolable, this time I was just a little sad, and looking forward to going back. Of course, now, as I think about leaving, I am getting sad. Way to go, Ben.

A last drive out through Takehara.

The Shinkansen (cool as ever) from Hiroshima to Tokyo.

And then before I know it, winging it out over the evening skies of Japan.

. . . and 15 hours later, coming in over good old Manhattan.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my little regression into photographing and blogging about Japan. I know I did. Now I’ve got to catch up on some silly things I’ve been doing in Brooklyn, but really how do you follow a five-post epic full of beautiful photos and intense emotion? I guess you follow it with whatever came next.

Last time I posted I wrote about how I was nervous to actually live with a Japanese family. As I mentioned it was no big deal in the end, but living is a hard thing to capture in pictures. I kind of love the Nakamura house though, because it is so Japanese without being typically Japanese at all. There is none of the spare elegant minimalism that most people think of when they think of Japanese aesthetics. The floor is covered in carpets and there are pictures and newspaper clippings stuck on every flat surface. There is a kitchen table and chairs (none of which are ever used), and there is the beautiful low wood table in the TV room where everything happens. If someone is home in the Nakamura house, there is a very good chance that they are sitting around this table, watching TV, reading, sleeping, or planning what to do next. When I live on Osakikamijima I spent a lot of time around this table, and it was truly wonderful to do that once again. See? When I started writing this, I wasn’t having any of those feelings. But while I’ve been writing, I flipped back to my pictures and looked at a bunch of pictures of us sitting around, eating meals, and just relaxing late at night - and boom, in my mind I am back there, petting the dogs and squinting because I’m trying so hard to understand the Japanese talk show on TV.

One of the first things I did in the days after we went to Naoshima was take the car for a day and go to Takehara. Every single time I drove through Takehara, I would pass this ancient abandoned shrine, and when I went back to New York, as I drove past it on the way to the airport, I felt stupid and guilty for never having taken the 40 minutes it would have taken me to get there. As soon as I was back and had some time to kill, I went straight to the temple.

Truth be told, it was the wrong time of day to photograph it, and the pictures didn’t come out very well. It was this temple built out of wood in the 1500s, and then destroyed by floods and torrential rains in the 1920s, and it had been left to decay naturally. Because the building was built in the traditional Japanese way, there are no nails or screws holding it together, and the years and the weather are slowly causing the building to shake itself apart. One building has collapsed completely, the other ones are starting to be worn down. My favorite bit was the ceiling in the top picture - the panels have been slowly falling out, making this great texture.

The stone basin for water has gotten completely covered in moss, but it is still is full of dark clear water.

Hmm. I was just looking over the photos I just uploaded to Flickr as a supplement to this post, and I realize I like a few of the temple more than I like the ones I chose for the blog. In an unprecedented move, I am bringing this one over from Flickr, because in retrospect it is my favorite picture from the shrine.

Here are a few more photos you can check out.

Being in Takehara, after I had thoroughly explored the shrine, I went to see the neighborhood of old buildings that haven’t been destroyed by floods. I had been in Takehara countless times, but I had only seen that area once or twice, another thing I regretted when I left last time. In a lot of ways I felt like I was making right the few wrongs about my time in Japan when I lived there.

Just some old house. I wouldn’t mind having this place as a little pied à terre in Japan.

This was a cool little thing - it was in a bamboo garden, and there was a little sign that pointed into a door and said “viewing area.” Inside was a smooth wood platform - you would take off your shoes and sit cross-legged on it - and enjoy this perfectly balanced little vista. The old wall with the perfectly aged wood, the stone arrangement, the sun coming in from the top, the roof tiles - it’s a little living picture that you can just sit and enjoy. It would be different in the spring or the winter, in the morning, at night, in the pouring rain or in the snow. Frankly, I love the idea of having a little view like this that is built expressly for aesthetic pleasure.

Now that I am looking at the pictures and remembering the day, I remember that this day was a scheduling disaster, with two full ferries, a closed restaurant, a missed connection with a friend, and cultural confusion at a gas station that changed from full service to self service while I was away. (Self service in Japan requires what seems to be an extensive questionnaire about your driving history, what type of gas you prefer, how much you’d like to spend, and probably some stuff about your blood type and annual income to be entered in on a touch screen before the gas starts pumping. After trying three times to press the buttons that make the gas come out, I fetched a gentleman and said “excuse me, but I can’t read.”)

The day after the (mis)adventures in Takehara, Mori, Koichi, and I went fishing. We had already been out on Mori’s boat, but because I was visiting all the way from New York, we had something special in store. We were going out on a big time charter boat, jigging for tuna in deep water. In the year I had been gone, Mori had become good friends with the boat’s captain, who we all referred to as I-san (pronounced “ee-san”) or Captain I. Apparently I-san was the first guy to ever try jigging in the inland sea, and for years he did it while getting very little attention and not much business, slowly mapping out what spots were good and what spots weren’t. Now slowly he has built up a name for himself over the last 12 years, and his boat is covered in sponsor’s decals. He does a bustling business with charters and knows every single rock and ledge along the bottom of certain areas of the inland sea. Normally he doesn’t go out with less than ten customers on board, but he took just the three of us out as an extremely friendly gesture.

His main boat, the Aki III - if you want to go Jigging in Japan, look this guy up - here is his website.

Mori and I-san, plus sponsor’s logos.

The first spot we tried was an extremely deep area where we were looking for tuna - they are not easy to catch, and after about an hour with no bites, we scaled down our expectations. (I was kind of disappointed, Mori had sent me the link to I-san’s homepage, and I had been looking at pictures like these.) We went closer to land and fished for Aji - a small but delicious fish that I had caught before - and immediately, they started biting. They are a pretty weak fish, and they don’t put up much fight. In fact, you have to reel them up gently, because their mouths are so soft that a firm yank will just rip the mouth off and you lose your fish. We were having a contest to see who could catch more, and then suddenly my rod bent double and the line started zipping out of the reel - not sure what was going on, I suddenly found myself in a real fight with a fish. It was light tackle and my drag was loose, but I was certainly not bringing in an Aji. As it came up over about five minutes, everyone came over to see what it was. It turned out I had hooked a Saba - a kind of mackerel. They are shaped like miniature tuna and are fast and strong. It was still the morning, and things were looking up.

Ok, fine, it doesn’t look very big - but it fought hard! That’s I-san on the right.

Lunch on the Aki III - Onigiri, fried chicken, and Aquarius. It doesn’t get much better than that. Mori is making a note of (with I-san’s permission) the spot where we caught all the fish - so he can come back with his customers.

After lunch we moved to a new spot for a new type of fish - tachiuo which literally means “sword fish” but translates to English as Cutlass Fish. We were not the only people looking to catch a few tachiuo, and so we found a spot among the other boats. We ended up next to this guy who did not seem to appreciate us with our giant boat, fancy jigging gear, and dozen or so fishing rods.

Tachiuo is traditionally caught handlining with bait. Because I-san is a big proponent of jigging, that is what we were doing - and for what it’s worth, we were pulling up a lot more fish than the guys who were handlining.

I talked about how much I like being on the water in my last post - for me, this pictures captures a little part of what it is that I like so much about being out on a boat in Japan.

We got down to the business of jigging, and soon we were hooking fish! Tachiuo don’t fight very hard, but they do put up some decent resistance and a few strong runs. They are long and flat, so it’s easy to get them pointed upwards and just slip them through the water. Here Mori is getting a bite.

I’ve got a good one!

Isn’t this just one of those pictures that makes you feel good? Actually, it probably only makes me, Mori, and I-san feel good. But that’s enough for me. Things to note: Tachiuo are almost chrome-like in their shininess - look at how mori’s fish is reflecting the sky and the pink lure. Secondly - they don’t have any tails! Just a little point. Weird. Finally - look at the way Mori’s fish is wriggling its fin. They all did that when you pulled them out of the water, and it looked really cool. I guess that’s probably their main source of propulsion.

Koichi catches one - Tachiuo have pretty mean looking faces. I think I can see myself reflected in that fish. That’s a first.

We kept reeling in the fish for who knows how long - three or four hours until the sun started setting. With the sun at our backs we headed to Takehara to gas up the boat. The ride from Osakikamijima to Takehara takes 30 minutes on the ferry, and ten minutes on the fast ferry. On the Aki III it took about four minutes.

Zooming to Takehara.

Aki III, waiting for the gas truck after an excellent day of fishing. We probably caught about fifty or sixty fish all told.

Heading back to the island for dinner and bed.

A few nights earlier, Mori and I went out for a little bit of night fishing. It was my first time back out fishing in Japan, and as we motored out of the dock and under the bridge, weaving between the little rocky islands that we used to dive around, Mori looked at me and said “So, Ben, how is it? How is being back out on the inland sea in Japan again?”

I thought about it, and waited for the wave on nostalgia and emotion to sweep over me, but it didn’t come. At first I was worried that something was wrong, that somehow my memories had fooled me, but since then I’ve thought about that moment when I waited for the rush of emotions and they never came, and I think I’ve figured it out. When I got back on that boat and untied the front and pushed off, it was like I hadn’t been gone a whole year. The memories of fishing and boating with Mori in the inland sea have become such an major part of my life that a year did very little to diminish them. When we got back on the boat and headed out of the harbor, it felt like we hadn’t gone fishing in a few weeks, and so of course we were out fishing together. There was nothing to come flooding back because it had never gone away.

That is even better than a wave of nostalgia and emotion.

(Extra photos here)

Mori’s wedding took place on a Saturday, and after our marathon night and three hours of sleep in a hotel in Hiroshima I got back into the car with Mori’s parents and Hiroko. We dropped Saori and Naoki off at the station and bus center, because both of them had to be back at school on Monday. The rest of that day is pretty much a blur. We drove back, picked up the dogs, stopped for food at a department store in Kure, and then got back to the island. I went back to Graham’s house and spent a little time there gathering up my stuff and then I moved over to the Nakamura’s house. This is actually a big deal, because no matter how many times I went fishing with Mori or had dinner with his family, I had never spent the night there. As a matter of fact, I never lived with a Japanese family. For all the time I spent in Japan, I only ever stayed with other foreigners, or in hotels. The one time I slept over at Mori’s friend’s apartment in Hiroshima could hardly be described as typically Japanese (we watched the Narnia DVD, drank beers, and then fell asleep) - so this was a new thing, and I was kind of nervous. Of course there was no reason to be, and everything was great. It was interesting though, you learn all kinds of things you didn’t know about Japan. For example, towels: In Japan, you use a bath towel once, and then you wash it. Mori’s mother and I had a pretty funny conversation about this in an odd mix of Japanese and English.

Mori’s Mother: Here is a towel for your shower.
Me: Oh, no thank you, I can use the one you gave me yesterday.
Mother: No no! A new towel every day. That is the Japanese style.
Me: Really? In America, we usually use a towel for a week or so before washing it.
Mother: (shocked) Do you also wear the same underwear for a week too before changing it?
Me: No, underwear we change every day. Towels and underwear are different for us.
Mother: (great relief) Oh, ok. Here is a new towel. Throw it in the laundry basket after you dry off.

Fascinating!

Anyway, Mori and Fumiko got back to the island later that day and we had a sleepy dinner together around the table, and everyone was in bed by ten. Hiroko had a third day off from her job on Monday, so we decided that the four of us (Mori, Fumiko, Hiroko, and I) would take a trip somewhere. We tried to decide where to go, and after much deliberation we decided to go to Naoshima, a little island in Okayama, the next prefecture east of Hiroshima. We decided to take my little rental Mazda Demio, and so on Monday morning, we set off across Japan.

I was totally worried that I would have big problems getting used to driving on the right side of the car again, but it took me all of about 10 minutes to get used to it. I used to drive every day when I lived there, so I guess there’s a part of my mind that can just switch back and forth into the two different modes. This is Mori’s picture, taken on his new Nikon SLR - so thank you, Mori.

It was really nice being out on the road, just the four of us. It felt like a pretty classic road trip (despite being only about four hours each way) - sometimes we talked, sometimes we just rode and looked out the window, someone would say something funny and the entire car would be in hysterics for a few minutes. We stopped at a rest area and ate all manner of junk food. We came over a mountain and into a beautiful golden field that went on for miles in every direction. I made a last minute turn into a little gravel lot so that we could get out and enjoy the view.

Mori was sleeping in the car - what a shocker.

Is it just me, or is Japan a surprisingly beautiful place? When I was back in New York, I always remembered Japan as being a gorgeous place, and somewhere in the back of my head there was a voice saying “you are only remembering the good things. Japan has beautiful parts and crappy parts, just like anywhere else in the world” - and then I got to Japan, and try as I might (except for Sunshine City) I couldn’t find the crappy parts. There’s something about that place. It’s just gorgeous.

Being a tiny island, Naoshima doesn’t have any bridges going to it, so we had to take a ferry from a small city by the name of Uno. We had an hour to kill before the next ferry when we got to the harbor, so we decided to take a walk to see what we could find. Uno was a ghost town, a perfect example of why rural Japan is in crisis as the population collapses. On a Monday afternoon nearly every shop was closed down the covered shopping street. We saw an old rusty sign for a fishing shop, and so Mori and I went to check it out - it looked like the door hadn’t been opened in years, the rods and lures still in the store were all covered in dust.

That said, we did find a store called “Mori” and so obviously we took this picture:

That says “Mori.” I swear.

Discovering that Uno was dead and somewhat depressing, we ended up just walking around on the enormous ferry dock for about 45 minutes. Giant concrete ferry docks are nice to photograph on.

These were serious ferries - three stories, announcements in Japanese AND English, and they were fast!

Mori, giant “seto” ferry, new shoes.

Even thought we were an hour early, we still managed to dick around enough that we got back to the ferry with just a couple minutes to go, and that was actually pretty bad because my little car was parked at the front of the line of cars waiting to get on the boat. We apologized and zoomed onto the boat.

What a cool enormous crane! I’ll take two.

It was kind of funny to be out with Mori and Fumiko that day, seeing as they had just gotten married - it kind of felt like Hiroko and I were along for their honeymoon. They seemed happy to have us along though, and I was glad to be there.

Sometimes, during my commute here, when I am squeezing onto a crowded dirty train, or navigating through traffic on my bike, I wonder why I ever left the inland sea. Around this part of Japan, you spend a lot of time on boats of all sizes, and there’s something wonderful about that. Some people don’t get it - they hate the boats because they are slow or not state-of-the-art, but that’s kind of the point of boats. You can’t make a boat go faster, if your ferry ride is an hour, you can be frustrated, or you can enjoy the boat ride for what it is. I never got tired of the ferry ride to and from Osakikamijima, and I always liked going to new places that were only accessible by ferry. There’s always something new to see on the water, even if it’s just a strong tide or new wind. The water is never the same twice, and sometimes, when my subway is stuck somewhere four stories underground, I wonder what the water would be like if I were out on it.

Naoshima is about a third of the size of Osakikamijima, but it has made a name for itself in the arts. It has two contemporary art museums housing some pretty serious work (one of the museums has five of Monet’s Water Lillies), and a bunch of projects in architecture and the arts that are ongoing in the towns. One of the museums is built underground in a mountaintop, but, geniuses that we were, we went on a Monday, and it turns out that even in Japan museums are closed on Monday, so no underground museum for us. Luckily the other one, the Benesse Art House was open, and turned out to be… well, it was a museum.

The building was spectacular, in a very spare minimalist style. The architect was Tadao Ando, and from what I’ve seen after Naoshima, that is basically his calling card. The art within this great building was the most boring and conservative collection of contemporary art I have seen in a long time - and the guards told us it was forbidden to take pictures in the building. This was clearly ridiculous, because why shouldn’t you take pictures of a beautiful building that you are looking at? We made it a game, we would hide from the guards and take pictures, sometimes posting lookouts to see if they were coming. In retrospect, we were all having such a good time just being together and being out in the world that there isn’t much that could have happened to ruin our day. We went to the cafe, where a tiny coke was 500 yen (about $5), and a coffee was 800, and we ordered our drinks and then tried to calculate the cost of each sip. A really fantastic day.

A Bruce Naumann sculpture in the central atrium of the Benesse museum.

Mori and Fumiko in the same room - if you clapped in this room, the echo would go on for ten seconds. And then a guard would be in to hush you.

We wandered the museum for an hour or so, (more pictures from there on Flickr) and then the evening was coming on and we needed to start heading back so we didn’t miss the last ferry back to Osaki. It had gotten kind of cloudy in the evening, and we started walking back to the car. On the way we passed a couple of those mirrors they have to help you see around blind corners.

I got three views in one!

It’s funny actually - I think this is the only Japanese sunset I photographed while I was in Japan. For those of you who read the old blog, you will know that is crazy. I saw a bunch of them, but I only took this picture:

(More talking about beauty, about the water, sunset, etc. You fill in the blank.)

Naoshima must have some industry along with the art museums, because as we left, we were the only passenger car - every other vehicle on the ferry was a work truck. We got onto the ferry and sat in the warm car and nobody said much of anything. We just sat in quiet contentedness.

Or contented sleepiness, depending on who you’re talking about.

It’s kind of hard to write about this - not because of any strong emotion, but because how do you write about a really excellent day that isn’t excellent because amazing things happened, it’s just excellent because of who you spent it with? Driving four hours to a museum on an island doesn’t sound like the best day ever, but it really really was. Sitting in my apartment in Brooklyn, writing this, when I try to come up with concrete things to write about that day, I don’t come up with much, other than a list of what we did. But when I remember how I felt that day - it was sublime. So if the pictures and words don’t quite capture it, it’s not for lack of trying. To say we drove home and went to bed doesn’t convey much, but driving on the dark highway, eating up the kilometers back to Takehara, I was really happy. Happier than I have been in a while.

It’s dangerous, actually, being that happy. Because then you leave the people and places that make you feel that way, and you come back down to reality, and you resent reality for not being as good as you know it could be.

When I got to the island, a funny thing happened - I hardly took any photos. For two days, I took a total of maybe 20 pictures, which for me in Japan is essentially zero. In those two days, I did all the things I think about so often and missed so much. Mori and I went cruising around the island with the seats back and the music on in his gold van. We got ramen from Tokumori’s, the best ramen shop in Hiroshima prefecture. I borrowed Graham’s scooter (Graham has the job I used to have on the island) and spent about three hours driving every single road and narrow path that I used to. I went up and down the mountain a couple times, I went down all the little windy side streets, I stopped at the little beaches I used to stop at, and dipped my toes in the inland sea. The weather was beautiful and clear, and it was stunningly gorgeous. The thing is, I had taken the pictures before. I spent an entire year taking pictures of that life, and as I rode around, I realized that I hadn’t forgotten anything. The intensity of my memories coupled with the roughly 18,000 photos I took while I was in Japan have made sure of that. What I missed were the intangibles - the feeling of pushing the 50cc engine of the Honda Jog around the hairpins on the south side of the island. The way the road feels under your wheels up towards the top of the mountain where the road crews never go and the road is starting to crumble and fall down the mountainside. The way it gets colder when you cross from the sunlit side of the mountain to the shaded side. Going to my favorite spot to watch the sunset and switching off the engine and suddenly being surrounded by this vast soft sound of wind in the leaves and birds far below. I wanted to do all that stuff, and I never once had the urge to pull out the camera. I could look at my old pictures and that would be just fine. Just the doing was sublime.

Just as I was thinking that my four gigs of memory cards and portable hard drive would be unnecessary, Saturday rolled around, and it was time for Mori’s wedding. At 9 o’clock in the morning I packed myself into a car with Mori’s entire family and we drove to Ujina, which is a little waterfront suburb of Hiroshima. After stopping for ramen, dropping the dogs off at the pet hotel, and checking in at our hotel, we arrived at “Remercier” - a fancy french restaurant and western-style wedding venue. Being with a Japanese family, of course we got there an hour early and the staff had to run out and tell us that the last wedding wasn’t finished yet and could we wait just a half an hour? We could, and went down to a pier to kill some time.

From left: Hiroko (eldest sister), Naoki (younger brother), Uncle Kenso (not technically an uncle, but close enough), Saori (younger sister). Remember them, they are the cast of this post.

Hiroko, killing time. It isn’t exactly the most beautiful waterfront, but Japan is a place where some huge percentage of the shoreline is hardened with reinforced concrete - this is the place where the word “tsunami” was invented - so to me, this is a very Japanese waterfront. See how the wall is curved outwards? That is to send a huge volume of water back out to sea. And see in the last picture how the door we came through can be shut with a big reinforced steel door? There are doors like that and walls like these along just about every foot of seashore that is not a huge cliff.

We sat and waited and I think everyone was pretty excited and nervous and after what seemed like just a couple minutes it was time for us to make our official appearances. The wedding staff showed us around and we put our stuff down and waited for the main event to arrive.

Mori and Fumiko - the main event.

Where to even begin? So much happened, and I don’t want to miss any of the strange or fun stuff that happened. This was a western-style Japanese wedding, which is to say that it looks a lot like your standard American or European wedding, but actually there’s a lot going on that is different. In terms of clothing, the men all wore suits and ties, but the women could choose between dresses and kimono. Now here is where my non-Japanese viewpoint clouds things - it could just be that I’ve just seen a million and a half girls in dresses and seven women really wearing kimono. It could be that a kimono seems exotic and different and striking to me just because I’m a dumb gaijin, but I guess I just sort of have to accept that.

I jumped in on this family photo - on the left are two aunts in the (extensive) Nakamura clan, and on the right are Hiroko and her mother. Looking stunning.

Anyway. As members of the Nakamura family (which I was essentially adopted into for the week) we got changed and waited to greet arriving guests. For Mori and his parents, that meant a lot of bowing and extremely formal conversations with distant relatives. For me and the sisters, it meant sitting around, trying to figure out who everyone was, laughing at the odd hairstyles and outfits that came through the door, and ordering endless coffees that we never managed to finish.

Saori is taking this picture, I think. Do I look nervous enough for you? My somewhat-forgotten Japanese got a hell of a workout.

Once the guests were all present, a funny ceremony happens. Some formal signing of the wedding certificate happens in a side chapel, and the wedding is officially done. After that, the families line up on either side of the aisle ordered from most important to least. I protested mightily, but they told me I was part of the Nakamura family and that I had better come along. The families - facing each other across the aisle, formally meet for the first time. Each side goes, and one by one, everyone introduces themselves formally. The general format is “(Family name), (rank in the family), (relation to the person being married). It is an honor to meet you.” - I started sweating as the microphone (yes, microphone) worked it’s way down the Nakamura line, but it was a familiar nervousness - I used to have to introduce myself formally at school when I was a teacher, so I just put on my game face, and when the mic came to me - with my very best Japanese intonation I said “From New York, of the friends, I am Ben. It is an honor.” Which got a big laugh from everyone, so that was all good. Mori clapped me on the back after and said “nice job!”

Mori and Fumiko, immediately after the introductions.

So the families meeting for the first time across the aisle of the secret wedding chapel, away from the guests - that’s pretty strange, right? There’s more. After this ceremony, we have the western wedding proper. Except that they are already officially married. But you know, it’s all good. It’s a Christian wedding - not because anyone is Christian, but because they like the look of a Christian wedding - the veil, the kissing the bride, the loving and cherishing, the “in sickness and in health” - so they do a Christian ceremony. The ceremony has got to be authentic, so how do they do that? A foreigner minister! I have no idea where this guy came from, but when the time came there he was, standing under the flower-draped arch, tiny bible and tiny reading light in hand. Actually wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Fumiko walked down the aisle with her father to - I’m not joking - a live rendition of Amazing Grace. At some points in this wedding, I had to bite my lip in order to keep from laughing, but it certainly looked good.

Nice, right? Outdoors, on a beautiful evening, as the sky darkened, with the sound of water and boats off in the distance. I can think of worse places to get married.

Oh Mr. Gaijin Minister. You crack me up. His Japanese was really abysmal. It was read, with a heavy American accent, off a small paper where it was clearly written out in English phonetically. When we all talked about this later, Fumiko and Hiroko said something pretty funny - apparently his poor Japanese was a marker of authenticity. If he had spoken flawless Japanese (or, god forbid, been Japanese) it would have given everyone a weird feeling. They prefer their religion imported and not too integrated, thank you very much.

They were married (again), everyone got misty-eyed, and then we went inside for what must have been 15-courses of absolutely excuisite Japano-French food. Tiny cubes of Kobe beef with a garlic cream sauce would be followed by the freshest raw fish salad, and then some lemon sorbet as a palette cleanser. There were two carving stations - the first doing beef, the second with giant slabs of premium fatty tuna, which he would slice with a gorgeous knife and lay over rice and hand-ground wasabi. Like everything in Japan, it was one part traditional, one part contemporary, with a twist of wackiness for good measure. I loved ever minute of it.

After dinner there were speeches. And they don’t mess around when it comes to speeches - We probably had an hour and a half of speeches, and after the wedding everyone was saying “you know, there really weren’t enough speeches.” Some people I couldn’t understand at all, some people I could follow along with. Fumiko gave a really nice one which even got me a little misty-eyed, and that was only understanding about thirty percent of it. Mori’s friends gave speeches. Actually, one of Mori’s friends gave a speech, and then three of his skating and graffiti buddies came out and performed a rap for him that they had written. I saw them going into a changing room and ducked in with them to see what they were doing and ended up with quite a few excellent photos of them. Example:

From Left: Takeno-V, POKUMIN, and MC Gatz.

Before we knew it, it was rolling up on 9 o’clock and it was time to wrap things up. That wasn’t the end of the wedding, just the end of the part at the venue. There was still lots of time for the nijikai - literally “second hour party” and sanjikai - third hour party.

Fumiko and Mori as we left the first party - there’s something about photographing weddings - everyone’s so happy that it just makes me happy to look back at the photos.

We went back to the hotel in Hiroshima and dropped off our (not insignificant) wedding guest gifts, and split off into two parties (adults and young adults). The bars were rented out and it was open bar all night. Champagne was poured over a pyramid of glasses. Girls changed out of their kimono, because the knot around a kimono is so tight that you can’t really move or consume any volume of food. We played bingo, with prizes, but not the usual bingo with prizes. When I was teaching the teachers would get together and we’d have bingo games - you might win a CD binder or a set of coasters. At this bingo game I got a crappy prize and walked away with a fancy lamp, and the main prize was a damn Nintendo Wii!

The girl on the right won it - and everyone shrieked. Except me. Of course I didn’t shriek. I don’t shriek.

So that was serious bingo. Other than that, the main activities were talking and drinking, not necessarily in that order. At around three in the morning the first bar closed (wimps!), so we headed to the third party at a bar in a back alley in Hiroshima whose owners had come from Osakikamijima. There were two people quietly having a drink when about twenty five people in their mid-twenties arrived, making a lot of noise and ordering a lot of drinks. We drank through all the sake they had, and then had a go at the whiskey as well, but somewhere around 4:30 people started getting tired and so we decided to move on. We found ourselves back out on the Hiroshima streets inebriation level high. A couple things happened.

First: many drunken group shots of “the boys” were taken.

Second: Naoki decided it was time to take off his clothes.

Once we convinced Naoki that it was not time to take off his clothes, we started walking - not back to the hotel, but in keeping with Japanese youth tradition - to a ramen shop! This is apparently classic Japanese - after a night of drinking, ramen is almost required. As we checked out shops one after another, each one was full of young people slurping noodles at quarter to five in the morning. I had never gotten to experience this, because there are no late-night ramen shops on the island, and I had never gone drinking elsewhere in Japan - especially not with Japanese people.

At a little after five we found a ramen shop with enough free stools, so we all sat down and shouted out our orders. As I had consumed probably nine or ten drinks over the course of the evening, my Japanese was flawless, and I shouted with the best of them.

Hiroko - most likely thinking “Ben, your Japanese is not flawless, no matter how drunk you are.”

My boys. On the left is SKLAWL - The top graffiti writer in western Japan, and a cool guy too. You can see some of his stuff here. The fifth picture down is a piece he did with Mori on the island. It was cool to meet him, Mori used to talk about him all the time - he got arrested while I was living in Japan and it was a mini sensation in Hiroshima. Now he only does legal writing, but “don’t worry,” he told me “there’s going to be a comeback.”

The sisters Nakamura. Nakamura is written 中村 in Japanese, in case you were curious. The first character means center or middle, and the second one means town or village. Together, Nakamura means “center town” - but it’s about as common as Smith is in the U.S. - so no one thinks about the meaning much.

At about 5:30 the ramen was done, everyone was yawning and starting to feel a little lightheaded. Everyone, that is, except for Mori, who had ended his night a few minutes earlier.

Look at the poor married boy. He certainly earned it.

I’ll be back soon with more adventures from the next week on the island and road-tripping around Japan. In the meantime, I’ve been posting supplemental pictures from each post on Flickr. The photos from the last post are here, and from this post (the wedding) are here.

I arrived in Tokyo at around 2 in the afternoon on a Sunday. By the time I took the train from Narita, checked into my hotel, and wandered blearily onto the streets, it was probably 8:00. About half a block from my hotel, all the streets were roped off, hundreds of people were milling around, and at every major intersection there was some sort of traditional Japanese dancing competition, with groups from all around the country. The music was blasting from trucks, most groups had a dude waving an enormous flag around, and I teetered on the street corner, jet-lagged 14 hours and still trying to come to grips with the fact that I was in Japan again. A suitable first night.

After that first night, I found Tokyo mostly rainy and full of ultra-nationalist right-wing demonstrations. They were angry about something with China, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what. Mostly, they were loud.

Shibuya, the famous intersection in Tokyo. I’ve been many times before, but this time I got a window seat at the Starbucks that overlooks it, and I spent a good hour drinking a coffee slowly and watching the people.

It stopped raining and everyone put away their umbrellas - except for you, guy in tan blazer that looks to be corderoy and pink shirt - put away your umbrella!

When I’m in Japan, all I want is a giant scooter that would comfortably seat two.

Seriously though, it was strange to be back in Japan taking pictures. Japan is more or less where I came to think of myself as a sort of photographer, where I learned how to take decent pictures, and where I got used to the camera I use now. Being back was comfortable, but in some ways I felt like I had already given Japan the full treatment. So many of the things that I saw I had already photographed, but I guess that’s a little like what I went through in New York when I came back home. Here, I have found much more satisfaction taking pictures of people, and I think I sort of found that in Japan this time around. All my favorite pictures are those of my friends on the island.

Of course, that said, I am now going to show you like ten pictures without people. Whoops.

Typical Shinjuku night scene. This is the Japan equivalent of a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge for the U.S.

I brought my old and beaten copy of Lonely Planet Japan which more or less screwed me every time I used it, but that’s another story. It mentioned a good garden near my hotel (in truth: not near), just one stop on the train and north (actually: two stops away and south) but I checked it out on a rainy Tuesday, and it did that thing that some places in cities can do - it made me forget that I was in the middle of a huge crazy (really, so crazy) city, and showed me that beautiful quiet side of Japan that is so easy to forget when all you see is neon signs, hordes of people, and endless pachinko parlors and arcades.

Why doesn’t New York have any gardens like this? It was just sitting in a little neighborhood, surrounded by shops and houses - through a gate, 300 yen to get in, and you’re completely surrounded by lush growth, the smell of plants and moss, and silence.

How can this beautiful place be a zero-interest spot in Tokyo? I spent about three hours wandering around all the little paths, and I think I saw all of about five people the whole time. It felt like it was my own garden.

In a couple weeks all those leaves are going to be bright red and the garden is going to be ridiculously packed.

In this little teahouse: a high school age couple. I don’t know how to say “don’t you two have school?” in Japanese, so I let them be. It’s a nice spot, a stream runs under the floor and over a little waterfall.

Almost too nice. Well done, Japan.

I sort of did all the things I was supposed to in Tokyo - in retrospect it was kind of a strange place for me to go back to, because I spent two weeks there just before I left, so I sort of felt like I had seen the things to see. I didn’t know anyone to show me the more secret spots, and I had seen all the main ones the last couple times I had been there. Then again, the point of my days in Tokyo wasn’t so much to see Tokyo – it was to readjust to being in Japan before going back to the island, where I knew my Japanese manners and language would have to be on point. In that sense, the time in Tokyo was good.

The trains still run on time – to the second.

I went to Senso-ji in Asakusa. It’s a giant working temple (as in the building is neither ancient nor particularly spectacular, but every day thousands of people come to pray and breathe in the healing smoke from the giant pot of incense. Also, to get there I had to use a lot of Japanese, which was good for me.

People come to the smoke and breathe it in and pat it into their clothes. It’s supposed to heal your ills. I breathed some of it in, and managed to be in perfect health for my entire time in Japan. A coincidence? You be the judge.

Even Japanese hipsters need help from Buddha every once and a while.

These ladies look like they just appeared out of the smoke. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case.

Tokyo was not all lovely temples and gardens though. By my last day there, I had sort of run out of things to do, and so I turned back to the Lonely Planet – that was my first mistake. It said that in my neighborhood was a food-themed amusement park called “Gyoza Stadium.” Gyoza are these delicious little fried dumplings, and this was supposed to be dozens of types of gyoza in a phony old Japanese town. I looked it up on the web and I didn’t find much, but a few people wrote about having great gyoza there, so I figured it would be an adventure for my last night in Tokyo. The book said that Gyoza Stadium was on the second floor of “Sunshine City,” in a store called “Alpha.”

So, I make my to Sunshine city, which turns out to be an enormous building on the loudest, gaudiest, and most characterless street in Ikebukuro. Ikebukuro is where I was staying, and it has two sides, divided by the train tracks. The side I was staying on was the red-light district, endless alleyways of gambling, cheap food, and Japan’s odd semi-prostitution. Low-level gangsters were all over in their ridiculous suits and enormous lapels, and drunken salarymen stumbled around every day starting at about 7 at night. It was always a little scary, but I’ve stayed there a couple times now and I know where a few good restaurants are, and so I had come to like it. My excursion to Sunshine City was my first time on the other side of the tracks, and it was horrible! Without the gangsters and the debauchery, all that was left were groups of vacant-looking shoppers, screaming camera store touts, and a faceless mass of people walking down a too-brightly lit street. Resolute in my determination to find the fabled Gyoza Stadium, I pressed on.

Of course, I should have known from the name, but Sunshine City turned out to be an enormous underground mall. What started out as relief at being out of the chaos of the street slowly turned into something worse as I rode an escalator down three or four stories into the earth and noticed that the giant hallways ahead of me were nearly empty. The whole place smelled of industrial disinfectant, the same smell as a hospital. I started following signs to Alpha, and twenty minutes later, I was still walking. I was underground and lost and didn’t even know if I could get to the surface if I needed to. I reached Alpha, went to the second floor and only found some sort of terrifying children’s ride that was being used exclusively by adults, a coffee shop, a dark and empty book store, and a Japanese-Italian restaurant that was closed. I walked around a bit and found a giant atrium.

I looked down two stories and up three and realized that the whole thing was underground and had a sort of feeling of being stuck in a horrible place. I suddenly felt like there was something fundamentally wrong with any culture that didn’t stop at building thousands of buildings and covering them with neon, but then also had to build an endless network of underground malls that seemed entirely unnecessary. It was all too much, I felt like the air I was breathing was compressed by the weight of the excess that I was surrounded by. Sunshine city had absolutely no charm. It was a hole under Tokyo coated in fake marble and phony windows, a hollow under the streets that brought to mind a big cavity, rotting away under the streets from too much sweet stuff.

So, after that, I turned tail and ran (for about 20 minutes) back to seedy Ikebukuro. I found a dark, smoky, seedy grilled eel shop that I had previously been too scared to go into, and opened the door. There was one counter, a guy grilling eel, his wife serving drinks, and two salarymen having beers. Terrifying indeed, but nothing could match the horror of Sunshine City, so I sat down.

Long story short, the salarymen were shocked to find out that I could speak Japanese, and we proceeded to get drunk together while eating smoky eel over rice out of wood lacquer boxes. They bought me a giant bottle of beer and asked me what I thought of Japanese women, and I toasted to them and we moved on from Japanese women to why they were too scared to go to New York (too dangerous) and whether you could get eel in a lacquer box in New York (yes, but it’s not very good). At the end of the night, they gave me their business cards and rolled out of the restaurant, and I finished my beer while watching the baseball game (Yokohama vs. Hiroshima) with the owner. What a giant relief.
Even more giant relief was when I took the train, rented a car, and then ended up here:

This was my first view of the island after a year of being away. I can’t even describe how happy and excited I was to get to the dock, park my car and breathe that air that was home for a year. It’s as beautiful as it ever was, maybe even better than it used to be. I had done exactly what I had set out to in Tokyo, and I was ready to go back home to Osaki.

So, a bunch of things have happened since I last posted, and since I took these pictures, but there’s no point in writing them all out. Instead, here are some pictures and some tales of what has been going on recently.

I’ve been spending about every other weekend in Montauk, and it’s excellent. I always manage to get a sun burn, but I also always manage to have a good time. Life slows down in Montauk, I usually have one night of despair and boredom, but then by the second night my system has slowed down a bit and I can handle the quiet and the lack of loud and crazy entertainment.

Montauk is also a great place to photograph. Here is my favorite picture of Leila.

Just another beautiful day at the beach. When I was little, I used to go to the beach every single day of summer, but I don’t think I really ever appreciated how nice it is to be able to sit by the water on a hot day, reading a book and watching people go by.

As a truly lame pet owner, I don’t like to go to Montauk without Neko, and when she comes, I think she has a better time than I do. She is usually a slow and affectionate cat, but as soon as we get to Montauk, she becomes an alert and athletic hunter (so far she has caught a bunny and a shrew - the bunny survived, the shrew…not so much). She also sits on sun-warmed rocks like some sort of savanna cat. Neko spends her Montauk weekends running around, hunting, and keeping tabs on the entire property. When I take her back to Brooklyn, she sleeps practically for a full day.

Neko, on patrol.

A few weeks ago, Leila’s friends (John on the left, Lydia on the right) came out to Montauk, and I was embedded with them as their photographer for an evening having drinks out at Inlet Seafood. There are a lot of pictures, but this one…these are some cool kids. I don’t really know if I can compare. Sometimes it’s nice to be behind the camera, making people look cool - less pressure.

The truly excellent Montauk car.

Also: Leila and John went fishing, and John pulled up a giant striped bass. We ate it, it was delicious! Something happened to that fish’s genes, the stripes missed a spot - it looks like someone smudged it a little bit.

Back in Brooklyn, maybe you heard that we had a lot of rain, and basically the whole city was flooded. That was the second of two huge rainstorms, this was the first. It poured rain in the middle of the night for a few hours, and I took some pictures because the rain was heavy enough to become like a fog, and everything turned orange and golden out in the street.

Speaking of despair upon returning from Japan, I may be having a little of that come October - I have gotten final boss approval - and so I will definitely be going back to Japan, and to Osakikamijima on October 6th. I have two weeks off, and I plan to make full use of it. Part of me is really really excited, to be sure - but there’s a part of me that is worried. Leaving Japan the first time was hard enough. How can I go back to all that for just a tiny slice of time, and then leave again? Sometimes it seems like it might just be easier to never go back, to let myself slowly forget it, rather than do this. I still think about Japan every single day, and that doesn’t show any signs of abating. Sometimes I think that I have damaged myself somehow by living there for a year, like I left a piece of myself on that island, and no matter what I do that part will always be there, no matter how hard it is to go back, no matter how far away it is.

No matter how it is, we can be sure that there will some very nostalgic blogging that goes on when I get back.

Whew, I thought I wasn’t going to going to delve into my emotions and all that. Anyway - Backtracking a little bit, a few weeks ago a bunch of friends and I went to N.Y. Noodletown, probably the best restaurant in Chinatown. The food was (of course) delicious, and while we waited for a table, I took some pictures of my friends that I liked.

Evan, in front of the perpetually steamy window. Evan was insistent that I take a candid photo of him. And then he just kept posing.

Evan checks out the meat, Annie checks me out.

It was Jason’s birthday a few weeks ago, and I went to his friends house where we had a barbecue and cake. It was in a funny back yard, and in that funny back yard I took a funny picture of Anna and Annie.

This is sort of reading like a laundry list of what I’ve been doing, but I guess that’s what happens when I wait this long to post pictures. I have practically forgotten when I took these photos. One of the more recent projects has been motorcycles. Remember when I went to the car show and sat on a big BMW and suddenly remembered my love for motorcycles that had taken root in Japan? Well, I’ve been taking pictures of all the nice bikes I’ve been seeing all over the city (that means no Harleys), and I’ve been putting them on Flickr. Here’s one I took on my way to ‘wichcraft, which is the best place I have ever been to for sandwiches.

Now, a funny thing just happened a few days ago. I wrote this blog post about a week ago, and then got busy at work. Last week, I wrote the second half of this post, and then put it online. It was there, because Lena Webb saw it, but then the next morning when I went to look for it, it was gone.

I am so backlogged right now that I am just going to post the pictures that remain without stories, and then try to post the next one soon.

Kristina’s We Are Your Friends parties: still happening, still fun, still attracting people with awesome shoes.

Sometimes though, depending on the weather, people clear out early, and then I take pictures of the disco ball.

Cafe Luluc on Smith Street: An comfortable neighborhood dinner place that turns out to also be an excellent brunch spot.

Many weeks ago we had a terrible heat wave. As I type this, we are having another one, so this seems very appropriate. I was walking crosstown to meet Emily for fish and chips, and it was probably 90 degrees and humid. Aside from the tremendous physical discomfort, it was kind of beautiful.

West 25th Street - home to Hip Hop, and also where I work.

There’s something very New York about sitting out on the sidewalk eating an early dinner on a hot summer night. You’re only going home to a rickety old fan, so why bother getting yourself used to air conditioning? Just have your burrito, sweat, and then go home and sit in front of the fan.

Lastly, a picture I like, taken in my garden, during one of my barbecues. It looks more glamorous than it is.

Joanna Wiederhorn and Anna Hoberman - now when you google search for them, you will find this image.

I’ll have some new pictures up soon.

First though, I should address a small but vocal minority of my readership. Last night I was out to dinner with some friends and Ms. Rosie said that my blog was odd. “It’s all normal” she said, “and then suddenly it’s all “this car is fast! This bike is fast!” She said that she sort of had a hard time getting involved in my passionate writing about driving machines, and so let me just give you a warning. Just about this whole post is about cars going fast and how awesome cars that go fast are, so if that bores you, you should probably just skim. Apologies in advance, Rosie.

Anyway. Last weekend Fred and I drove up to Montreal to see the Grand Prix of Canada. The Grand Prix is a Formula 1 race - Formula 1 cars are the fastest and most sophisticated race cars in the world, and there are 17 races all around the world during the season. Last week was Canada, two weeks before that was Monaco, and so on. There are eleven teams (constructors) who pretty much build a car from the ground up and then continue to refine it during the season. Each team has two cars and two drivers in each race, which means 22 cars per race. The races are 70 laps, which usually ends up at about 100 miles. The drivers and constructors score points for finishing in the top eight positions, and no points for the bottom 14. It is not something I would have imagined getting into, but somehow I downloaded the Hungarian Grand Prix in Japan, and then watched it with Fred when I got home from Japan. Over the winter I thought about it now and then, and then when the motorsport season got started, Fred and I just ended up watching it. The first race we were pretty lost. The second we started following what was happening. By the third race we had bought tickets to see the GP in Canada, and were watching the practices on Friday, the qualifying on Saturday, and then the race on Sunday. Now I think about team strategies during my commute to work, I think about the temperament of the drivers while I should be doing work, and I watch YouTube videos of the great moments of Formula 1 all the time. I was just watching [the legendary] Ayrton Senna doing laps at Monaco in the 91 qualifying five minutes ago. So, you can imagine my excitement as we arrived in Montreal last weekend.

Felipe Massa, the hotshot Ferrari driver, at Saturday practice.

So, even though just about no one in the U.S. knows about Formula 1, it’s one of the biggest sporting events in the world. Last year the Monaco Grand Prix was the third most watched television event in the world, after the Super Bowl and the World Cup of soccer. Almost 200,000 people came to see the race in Canada, and that is a lot of people.

All the red hats and shirts are Ferrari fans. They were going to be disappointed.

One thing about Formula 1 cars is that they are fast. They are so fast that it is kind of difficult to comprehend that what you are seeing is a car being driven by a person. They pass by so quickly and make so much noise that your mind has a hard time processing what you are seeing. I stood up, got ready to take pictures of F1 cars going by, and no matter what I did, the pictures came out like this:

Massa, for Ferrari again. There was a guy next to us who was grossly fat, drunk, and would shake his fist and shout “Massa!” every time he went by.

See how the car is not even in the frame? That was one of my best. Most were like this:

I could be a real nerd and tell you about each driver that I have a picture of. I won’t. Except that this is Fernando Alonso, who drives for McLaren Mercedes, is a three-time world champ, and has been acting kind of pouty since his rookie teammate has been getting all the attention.

Anyway, as it turns out, a Grand Prix weekend doesn’t just mean the Formula 1 race. There are “support races” which are slower classes of cars that have their own races and benefit from the exposure to the thousands of fans that come for F1. One of those is the Ferrari Challenge, where race versions of Ferrari sports cars are raced by rich men who have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on a car that is not legal to drive on the road, and will most likely crash and be totaled.

This car is a Ferrari F430. If you keep an eye out for exotic cars, you see them from time to time - but you never see them being really driven. To push a Ferrari as far as it will go, you will be getting close to 200 miles per hour, and that is illegal almost anywhere in the world. Ferraris on the street are like race horses that have to walk for their entire lives. It is really great to see and hear Ferraris being ridden to the absolute limit.

Speaking of seeing and hearing, I had my video camera with me during the weekend, and I made a little video of cars going by. It’s not the most interesting video by a long shot, but you get to hear the cars, which if you ask me is more than half the point of going to a car race. You can check it out here.

So, at the end of the Saturday qualifying sessions, Fred and I headed out to see where everyone goes to party after the races. We took the metro and the wandered over to Crescent Street, which is where it all goes down. As we were walking, we started noticing how many extremely fancy cars there were. It seems that if you have an exotic sports car, the Grand Prix weekend is when you get it detailed and take it out for a drive. The number of Ferraris and Porsches out was so intense that I ended up just letting most of them roll by unphotographed. It was only when I could get a bunch of exotics into a single picture did I take the photo. It was like a game.

Not one, but three Ferraris parked in a row.

This was good - these guys saw me step out with the camera and they arranged themselves for maximum photographability. That’s a Porsche 911 Turbo on the left, a Lotus Elise on the right, and a Lamborghini Murcielago behind the Lotus. Just Driving - that’s almost a million dollars worth of cars right there.

I have probably 20 or 30 more pictures of “Car Porn” as Brendon likes to call it - I will spare you, but if you’re interested they will be on my Flickr soon. Instead though, let’s fast forward to Sunday - race day! The stands were completely packed, I was wearing my BMW Sauber F1 team shirt, and things were about to get underway. Except first, a digression - why were there so kind of gross euro-style trashy people at the Grand Prix? The tickets were not cheap, the demographic was definitely not the NASCAR crowd, but here is pretty representative sample of the trashy F1 spectator:

Yick! There were a lot of totally normal and good people there too, but we saw a surprising number of people like this, and we saw them consume their body weight in beer over the course of the weekend. It was impressive, in a terrible and frightening way. So - don’t go to Formula 1 to see beautiful people. Go to see beautiful cars.

The opening parade for the race - each driver came through sitting on the back of an Austin Healy - this is the thorn in Alonso’s side, Lewis Hamilton, 22 year old racing prodigy.

After the driver’s parade, they all go and put on their five layers of fireproof clothing, and then bring their cars out to the starting grid. When they get there, the entire car is disassembled and prepared for the race. It’s a madhouse, with hundreds of mechanics and engineers working on cars, and then hundreds of media, celebrities, and people with a lot of money mingling with drivers, team managers, and coaches.

These eight guys are just a part of the Honda pre-race team.

One thing that kind of was annoying about the race - as there are hundreds of thousands of fans coming, and as they are getting pretty drunk, and because cars going at 200 miles per hour are pretty dangerous, there is a ton of crowd control. Fences in front of fences everywhere mean that no matter where you are, you are seeing the race through chain-link. It’s not so much a problem for watching, but it is a pain for taking pictures.

And off they go! Renault had a pretty bad weekend, all told. With a lot of practice on slower cars, I figured out how to properly lead the cars with my camera, and got a couple decent pictures of the F1 cars going by - except for the damn fences.

The sound of a Formula 1 car is almost indescribable. It is so loud that even with earplugs, the sound is a shrieking scream that you feel in your bones. Without earplugs, the race would simply be unbearable. The sound of 22 cars revving their engines and starting off was like a an earthquake made of explosions and dentist’s drills. At one point I was drinking some water, and as the cars passed I could feel the vibrations shaking through the water. Watch the YouTube video at high volume on a good sound system - it won’t be anywhere near what it was like to be there, but it might give you the tiniest idea.

The cars stop in for two or three pit stops during the race. When they stop, about twenty guys descend on the car, change all the tires, adjust the wings, fix any minor damage, and refuel the car - in under 7 seconds. Why can’t we get some of that in gas stations in the real world?

The race was a great race - a lot of excitement, a lot of overtaking and good driving, and Lewis Hamilton, the rookie driver who had never driven in Montreal before came in first winning his first race. The low point was when BMW’s second driver, Robert Kubica had a terrible crash. All the stands went dead silent, and basically we all thought he was dead. The race was stopped temporarily as the medical car rushed to the crash, and Kubica was taken off the track by helicopter. The awesome part is first that despite having a crash that would have been fatal 10 years ago, he sprained his ankle and got a minor concussion, and will probably race this Sunday. The second and more wonderful part is that I found this out on the drive home. We were waiting in the (awful, endless) line for the border, and a car pulled up next to us. Seeing my BMW shirt, a guy leaned out his window and said “hey, Kubica is going to be okay - it turns out he didn’t even break his leg! We all thought he was dead! Anyway, have a good one!” Formula 1 fans, unite! [I just did some post-blog reading on the F1 news sites, and Kubica will be sitting out the next race. He is feeling fine, but he can’t risk a second concussion so soon - the 19 year old BMW test driver will race his first F1 race at Indianapolis this weekend.]

Lewis Hamilton, race winner, behind the damn fence post.

So, the race is over, about 200,000 people are trying to get off the island where the race is held, and they all go to get on the subway. What does it look like when 200,000 people try to get into one mid-sized subway station? It looks like this:

And then when you’re driving home in the late afternoon on the beautiful highway from Montreal to New York, it looks like this: