fire-flowers

Cancelled last year due to self-restraint, last night was Kamakura hanabitaikai (fireworks).

As the sun set, a zillion people gathered on the beach

The Japanese don't need telling to be self-restrained. It was all very calm - these girls hardly moved during this 8 second exposure.

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Wisteria muncher

I wonder what he or she will be when they grow up.
Evening:

Morning: There are now several tendrils free of leaves.

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Not a flower

I expect there are more flowers to blog, but then I saw this car outside Motomachi Starbucks (of course). Perhaps the reader will tell me if it is fundamentally a special car, or just a specially decorated normal car.

Perhaps the reason for all the funny cars in that part of Yokohama is that, in the city, cars are pretty useless if used only for transport. Here is something far more useful - the "one touch picnica". Those who care to check the EXIF, will see that poor James has crumbled, and bought me a nice new P&S camera. He made me wait until it had gone down by 10,000¥ and the Panasonic vapourware competitor had been announced, but my argument of taking it on our upcoming trip to the mountains seemed to finally tip the scales. With a minor alteration(*), it just fits in the Goretex case I made for the S100. Note handy usefulness of EGU badge lanyards!
(*It is a slightly tight fit, so I sewed some ribbon to the outside of the case which enables it to be eased over the lens. Will just have to wait and see if the tightness/friction causes the case to wear out too fast.)

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Aliens

While we're on purpley theme, here is a photo from December that I seem to have forgotten to blog...

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Employment Opportunity!!!

Come and work with this nice man (and me) in lovely Japan! The position is part of a big new multi-centre project which has just got its English name, ICA-RUS: "Integrated Climate Assessment - Risks, Uncertainties and Society". There is the opportunity to work with many of the most active climate scientists in Japan as well as scary James. Actually James is the nice one - and he only uses his scathing expressions on me! The working conditions are pretty good too...

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Agapanthus

I used to call these plants "those oniony things", but now I can never forget their real name, since my mother-in-law corrected me. These days I bewilder poor James by squealing "agapanthus" from the back of the tandem every few minutes (they are very common flowers).

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Another orange flower

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orange flower

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Mango Passion Tea Frappuccino with Mango Pudding

It is nicer than the chocolate cookie crumble frappuccino with white chocolate pudding, but, even so, one shouldn't order a tall unless it is to share. I'm not sure that these are exclusive to Japan, but putting gooey solids in drinks is normal practice...

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Lotus

The lotus are coming...

 

[Hachimangu, Kamakura]

 

Posted with Blogsy

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Lichen 'n' stuff

Nature Geoscience said last week that lichen 'n' stuff is really important (see here). Up until now I have kept lichenish shots hidden away, as I didn't think anyone else would be interested. But now you are *supposed* to be interested!

Luckily, super-clean is not the only Japanese aesthetic, but sometimes a very particular level of dilapidation is cultured, and it is in such places that lots of lichen 'n' stuff may be found [Myohonji, Kamakura].

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Flowers...

Got a bit of a flowery photo backlog to blog. This is the famous Meigetsuin staircase in Kamakura taken from not your usual angle. The hydrangea have had a good innings this year, as it has been rather cold. By cold I mean that one can walk around not fast but quite happily in a lesiurely sort of a way in shorts tshirts and sandals, and do not have to vend an isotonic drink every 100 yards. In other climate news, rainy season, which is usually expected at the start of June, has not yet started. Perhaps it will not happen at all this year.

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Party

The party after Saturday's meeting was not actually at Standing Sushi (the establishment in the middle of this photo), but next door...at Lion, on the left as you look at the picture...

After a couple of beers things were, however, getting quite blurry. Or rather, my TX5 had gone wrong again. While I think the effect adds an authentic mood to an after work beer party on a Saturday, the fact that the blur appears on all shots gets a tiresome quite fast.

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Market Research

Still in little-camera quandary after giving sister in law my Canon S100. As no one will recall (cos hopefully you do not care, and only look at the pictures on this blog), I was going to buy the new Sony RX100. Then James was jealous, but finally he decided to wait for the rumored (sic) Pansonic LX7 to replace his LX5. This somehow left me with my Sony TX10, which has a firmware issue that makes me want to smash it to the ground and stomp on it, only I don't bother since being a "robust" camera that might not kill it. Picked up my Sony TX5 again, which is nice, and worked for a week (see recent posts on this blog for examples!) before its image stabilisation fault resurfaced.

So what to do? I thought I'd interrogate the man and woman on the street...


Left to right, top to to bottom: "getting the shot" DSLR style, NEX+adapter+Canon manual focus super-geek style (woot!), pinky P&S style, colour coordinated phone camera style, "does he realise he's photographing me?" style, backseat driver shooting style, shoot without looking style, and his 'n' hers shooting style x2.

But then I found image making enlightenment... [All taken at Hachimangu, Kamakura with my trusty DSLR... of course :-) ]

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