I’ve always been a photographer. I didn’t know that when I was younger, but looking back in retrospect it’s pretty to clear to me now. As a kid I took a lot of photos with my mom’s 110 camera, and was pretty fascinated by my dad’s Canon SLR (which he later sold). By the time I was a teenager, I…
You live in Kyoto? How wonderful. You’re so lucky. I’ve always wanted to live in a city like Kyoto… Me too. It’s a strange experience, living in a place that is very well worn on the tourist trail. I’ve visited (and loved) New York, London, Paris, and have lived in some moderately well-known cities too (Hiroshima, Toronto). Once I started…
I was always a pink kind of girl. Pink shirts, pink socks, pink barrettes…even the decor of my bedroom was pink. I was a pink kind of girl even though I was a bit of a tomboy too. For a while, in my teens and early twenties I traded in the pinks for darker, plainer colours, but over time I…
Keage Station. It’s quiet, empty. I am the only person to have gotten off the train. The subway tracks are located deep beneath the ground and it’s just me and the silent hum of the escalators as they carry me upwards past pictures of the stars of the local zoo. I emerge into the dark, slick streets in front of…
Forget a white Christmas. How about a white New Year’s? New Year’s Day started beautifully, with a crystal blue sky and nary a cloud in sight. By noon, however, the clouds had rolled in and the first few snowflakes began drifting down. By the time I finished lunch there was almost two inches of sticky wet snow clinging to everything.…
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.…
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…
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…
Falling Off the Map 