Saturday, January 22, 2011
Photography in Tokyo
I got to spend half a day running around Tokyo this weekend and it worked out very well. I'm not a big fan of large cities, but I love taking pictures of colorful people and big cities offer so much more opportunity. I could easily spend 2-3 days taking pictures just between Shinjuku and Harajuku.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Photography in the Philippines
The Philippines seems like an obvious place to practice some photography. But, its not without its challenges. First, having been there so many times, I sometimes have trouble stepping back and seeing what I once found exotic or interesting about the place. Second, Filipinos love cameras. It can sometimes be extremely difficult to get a candid shot or a picture without a dozen little kids trying to squeeze into the frame.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Christmas in the Philippines
Before its too late, I wanted to get up a few pics from our Philippines Xmas.
We got to go to Marlon's school and see a nice little reenactment of the Nativity.
The Philippines version varies a bit from the one we're familiar with....two of the kings were of middle eastern origin while the third was actually Liberace. 
Rose came up with the fabulous idea of dressing me up as Santa Claus.
Rose had put together dozens of plastic gift bags for the village residents and candy for the kids. The bags essentially guaranteed most of them would at least have a Christmas dinner of ramen, eggs, and tuna.
We got to go to Marlon's school and see a nice little reenactment of the Nativity.
The Philippines version varies a bit from the one we're familiar with....two of the kings were of middle eastern origin while the third was actually Liberace. 
Rose came up with the fabulous idea of dressing me up as Santa Claus.
Rose had put together dozens of plastic gift bags for the village residents and candy for the kids. The bags essentially guaranteed most of them would at least have a Christmas dinner of ramen, eggs, and tuna.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Who's Raising Our Children?
Had an important day with the girls today. Its always been said that "a boy needs a father". Well, girls need fathers too. We often leave the raising of ladies to the women. There are important life lessons which mothers too often either cannot provide or simply neglect the need to provide. Today, Angelica and Helen learned about Queen and now appreciate the ritual of cranking the stereo up and screaming Freddie Mercury lyrics out the car window. Who else is going to teach them these things, their mother? I thnk not. This is your job dads.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Festival Time
Well, its festival season in Japan. One thing about Japan is that they're crazy about festivals. Particularly during the summer and fall, you could easily go to a differnent festival every weekend. There are salmon festivals, garlic and beef festivals, blossom festivals, apple festivals, cherry festivals, etc, etc, etc. I've always been one to avoid festivals...not because they're not interesting, but because I've never been a fan of crowds. But, we attended a couple this weekend and and it was pretty fun. The first festival was the annual Misawa city festival. It consisted of alot of folk music/dance performances, food booths, and a couple of parades.
The ice cream guy...
A little drum major...
Why does the fat kid always play tuba?
His World of Warcraft username is HannibalTheAnimal128.
The kids' fave...
The ice cream guy...
A little drum major...
Why does the fat kid always play tuba?
His World of Warcraft username is HannibalTheAnimal128.
The kids' fave...The next day, we took a trip to Aomori City to check out some shopping malls. We didn't intend to go to any festivals, but ran into this one on accident. There was a set of perfoming groups who appeared to be competing with eachother.
The groups were mostly women and young girls with a few guys mixed in. They were doing an action-packed, martial-arts style of synchronized dancing.
They were all dressed alike and performing when...
Blam!!! They'd flip their outfit and all of a sudden, be in a different colored outfit. As I said, there were several different group performances, and the outfit changing thing was common among them all.
There uniforms also consisted of umbrellas, fans, etc.
The dance routine was pretty amazing in itself. But more fascinating was a part of the performance behind the dancers...
Each dancing group had one or two guys in the back with these gigantic flags. They were waving them around along with the music and it just sent chills down your spine to experience it.
To stand there and wave such a huge flag took a ton of strength and balance.....
and a badass hairdo...
The groups were mostly women and young girls with a few guys mixed in. They were doing an action-packed, martial-arts style of synchronized dancing.
They were all dressed alike and performing when...
Blam!!! They'd flip their outfit and all of a sudden, be in a different colored outfit. As I said, there were several different group performances, and the outfit changing thing was common among them all.
There uniforms also consisted of umbrellas, fans, etc.
The dance routine was pretty amazing in itself. But more fascinating was a part of the performance behind the dancers...
Each dancing group had one or two guys in the back with these gigantic flags. They were waving them around along with the music and it just sent chills down your spine to experience it.
To stand there and wave such a huge flag took a ton of strength and balance.....
and a badass hairdo...Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Daisetsuzan 2010
Well, one trip I'd been planning for months was a summer backpacking trip with Angelica. I wanted it to be 4-5 days and decided to head up to Daisetsuzan National Park in Hokkaido. I did the entire traverse of this park with Ryan Connell last August.
It started out with an 8 hour train ride to Asawikawa and a 1-hour taxi ride to Asahidake Onsen. We camped our first night at the base of Asahidake (Mount Asahi).
Now, that's a badass shemagh. If you don't know about the shemagh, you probably don't have a need to know. Not even Chuck Norris ever wore a shemagh. That's right, not even Chuck Norris.
On the lookout for Hokkaido Brown Bears on our way up Asahidake.
While I expected to see more snow being up there a month earlier than last year, I was really impressed by the size of the icefields remaining in July. They made for some challenging traverses.
Angelica was a trooper the whole trip...
Pretty flowers...
Beautiful mountain vistas....
Late on the first day, massive cloud formations started to break over the horizon... 
We spent our first night at the Hakuun Dake tentsite. After a whole night of heavy rain and winds buckling our tent over, we decided to head towards the edge of the park. The second day was much more challenging than I could have imagined. We spent the whole day working towards Ishimuro Cabin which is the most comfortable cabin in Daisetsuzan and has the easiest escape route out of the park. I just had no idea how difficult it would be to get there. The entire day, we were confronted with stinging rain and wind gusts nearly capable of knocking you off your feet. The normal route from Hakuun Dake to Ishumuro Cabin normally takes only a couple of hours. But, about 20 minutes from the cabin, we found the trail ending at a collapsed snow bridge, about 50 feet above an angry river. Because of poor visibility and extremely slippery snowfield conditions, we were forced to make a 5 hour detour along a safer route. Even the safer route got the better of me. At one point, I lost my footing and took a 50-meter tumble with my 50lb pack down a 30-degree snowfield. Luckily, I escaped with a bruised leg and a broken backpack strap. About an hour later, we arrived at Ishimuro Cabin, cold, wet, and tired. As can always be expected, the Japanese folks at the cabin took care of us and ensured we got warmed up and fed. Due to the weather, we were forced to spend 2 nights at Ishimuro Cabin. On day 4, we hiked out of the park under sunny skies. We spent our 4th night at a cozy youth hostel in Sounkyo Gorge. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures after the morning of day 2 due to water getting into my camera lens.
That's right...not even Chuck Norris.....
It started out with an 8 hour train ride to Asawikawa and a 1-hour taxi ride to Asahidake Onsen. We camped our first night at the base of Asahidake (Mount Asahi).
Now, that's a badass shemagh. If you don't know about the shemagh, you probably don't have a need to know. Not even Chuck Norris ever wore a shemagh. That's right, not even Chuck Norris.
On the lookout for Hokkaido Brown Bears on our way up Asahidake.
While I expected to see more snow being up there a month earlier than last year, I was really impressed by the size of the icefields remaining in July. They made for some challenging traverses.
Angelica was a trooper the whole trip...
Pretty flowers...
Beautiful mountain vistas....
Late on the first day, massive cloud formations started to break over the horizon... 
We spent our first night at the Hakuun Dake tentsite. After a whole night of heavy rain and winds buckling our tent over, we decided to head towards the edge of the park. The second day was much more challenging than I could have imagined. We spent the whole day working towards Ishimuro Cabin which is the most comfortable cabin in Daisetsuzan and has the easiest escape route out of the park. I just had no idea how difficult it would be to get there. The entire day, we were confronted with stinging rain and wind gusts nearly capable of knocking you off your feet. The normal route from Hakuun Dake to Ishumuro Cabin normally takes only a couple of hours. But, about 20 minutes from the cabin, we found the trail ending at a collapsed snow bridge, about 50 feet above an angry river. Because of poor visibility and extremely slippery snowfield conditions, we were forced to make a 5 hour detour along a safer route. Even the safer route got the better of me. At one point, I lost my footing and took a 50-meter tumble with my 50lb pack down a 30-degree snowfield. Luckily, I escaped with a bruised leg and a broken backpack strap. About an hour later, we arrived at Ishimuro Cabin, cold, wet, and tired. As can always be expected, the Japanese folks at the cabin took care of us and ensured we got warmed up and fed. Due to the weather, we were forced to spend 2 nights at Ishimuro Cabin. On day 4, we hiked out of the park under sunny skies. We spent our 4th night at a cozy youth hostel in Sounkyo Gorge. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures after the morning of day 2 due to water getting into my camera lens.
That's right...not even Chuck Norris.....
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