Celebrating big holidays like Christmas in a foreign country always comes with a mixed bag of emotions. Some expats, especially in their first couple of years abroad, will rush home every major vacation. Others do their best to ignore it and treat it like any other day. And some, like me, do their best to celebrate it any way they…
I will be the first to say that this post has nothing to do with travel or photography. I was recently going through some old files and I came across a list of bad translations that my students had written for an assignment where they had to interview someone. The interviews were harmless stuff, but the students were lazy and…
About a month ago I saw a notice for a sumi-e workshop in Nara with a well-known sumi-e artist, Christine Flint Sato. Eager to try my hand at some traditional Japanese crafts, I signed up. And on a warm November morning, I found myself grinding a sumi stick on an ink stone in a workshop with about 12 other students.…
“You wanna guide?” “No, choose me!” “I’m the best one – you come with me!” As my friends and I were walking up the path to the Angkor temple of Preah Khan, a gaggle of boys came running down, each trying to get one of us to agree to his particular guiding services. My friends graciously rejected their sincere offers…
So you want to buy film in Japan. Well, the obvious choice would be Yodobashi Camera. The flagship store in Shinjuku is a mecca for photographers everywhere, but especially if you are a film user, you will love the film and darkroom floors (both in separate buildings). There are Yodobashi Cameras in most major Japanese cities and I think all…
Japan is a photographer’s paradise. Naturally, it has a lot of appeal to photographers in terms of the subjects it offers: old, traditional buildings, modern cityscapes, quirky Japanese goods and fashion, and more. And more importantly, it has cameras, lots and lots of cameras. I first moved here in 1999. Back then you’d be hard-pressed to find an internet cafe…
Japanese festivals come in all sorts of forms: fireworks, parades, formal and informal entertainment, dances, and more. I like going to festivals, they’re interesting, fun, and visually visceral. I’ve learned a lot about festivals here, so much so that when I go back home or to other countries I’m kind of surprised that my knowledge of what to do doesn’t…
A small chain of islands dot the Pacific Ocean south from Kyushu to Okinawa. At about the halfway point lies Amami Island and nearby, like a forgotten smaller sibling, is the island of Kikai. One December morning, somewhere on Kikai Island, three girls go for a walk to the beach. They decide to take a break and have a snack…
Every now and again people post links to articles about how film is the new cool. How young people enjoy it’s “I don’t know what I’m going to get” factor, shooting expired colour film or overpriced lomo film in their lomo cameras, or spending (equally) too much money on the Impossible Project’s Polaroid film (a worthy cause to be sure)*.…
Do you ever feel that it’s too late to visit some places that have become overly popular? I just recently read an article about visiting Angkor Wat (for the first-time tourist), and while it explained a lot about the site itself, it conveniently omitted the realities of what it means to visit that complex (and the area in general). I…
Falling Off the Map 