JAPAN BONUS 2: Signs, Graffiti, Stickers & More - PART 1

Japan's cities, or at least Osaka and Tokyo are filled with little things that catch your eye
and grab you and stop you in your tracks. Its such an overwhelming and inspiring sensory
overload, that sitting here at my desk at home sort of makes me feel entirely empty.  If it
wasn't for some music and all the fresh memories I am trying to record right now, all of it
would surely fade away. If you are like me, than you know exactly how adulthood and all
the responsibility and work that comes with it can quite easily and quickly sap your soul
of every drop of creativity and inspiration you ever had. Traveling, especially to such an awe
inspiring place, has the ability to breathe life back into your soul so quickly, its almost as if
you've become a kid again.

While in Japan, I had to stop and take quick snaps of some of these little things.  Mostly,
these things consisted of signs, graffiti, stickers, random artwork, weird looking doors, etc. 
There was just so much.  Unlike our cities here, Japan seems to have such a vast variety
of everything, I don't think I would ever get bored there.  After looking at some of our photos,
my Mom said,  "it looks like a giant amusement park".  I never thought about it that way, but
she's right.  Everything is larger than life and customized and different and meant to make
you see it.  I think all of these things are meant to make you stop and look, and it works. 
Anyway, this is Part 1 of a multi part series of LJ posts that will deal with nothing other than
all these things I took snaps of.  Enjoy.

I'll start off with this sign, for Nikon, which obviously is import.

DAY 2: Volks Kyoto and more...

After an amazing first day in Japan, we set out for Volks Kyoto, the HQ for Linda's dollies.

To get there, we had to hop on the train to a different area of Kyoto.

JAPAN BONUS 1: Gion Cemetery

One of the places on the agena for Kyoto was Gion Cemetery.  Words can barely describe the
place, but I'll try.  Photos do no justice, but they help.

The cemetery is nestled in with all of the ancient and beautiful Gion temples and shrines, and
it backs up to some densely wooded mountains behind it.  This cemetary is just as remarkable
as Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, but in a completely different way.  The weather in Kyoto was
warm, humid, swampy and rainy.  While this was hard for me to deal with (I hate heat, and humidity
especially) it did make for some nice low contrast photography.  However, the sky was totally grey-
white/light blue, which made getting a good exposure somewhat challenging.

 

DAY 1: Kyoto

Our first full day in Japan was spent in the city of Kyoto. From the moment we left our hotel I knew we were at the start of a trip of a lifetime. Kyoto, a city full of ancient temples and shrines, is an immaculately clean place. Not a leaf on the ground out of place. Its hard to describe exactly how clean this city is, you just have to experience it for yourself. I've never seen anything like it.

Konnichiwa, Nippon!

As you may or may not know, Linda and I embarked on a two week adventure to the island
of Japan last month. We've wanted to go to Japan for as long as I can remember, and there
were many times in the past when we started to plan the trip, but due to one thing or another,
it just wasn't in the cards.  But 2010 was the year we made it happen. Linda painstakingly
planned every hour of every day of the trip so we could maximize our experience, and to my
surprise I think we accomplished over 85% of the things we wanted to do, which I think is
pretty impressive, since most of the time you run into problems on trips like this that
prevent certain things from happening.  One other thing that was nice about this trip, is that
we met up with our close friends (Tom & Kris from Chicago and Jim up from Singapore)
while there which made the experience that much more fun because we could share it with
other gaijin.

So, with out further ado, I will start documenting the trip here on LJ.  But be warned, some of
the following posts will be epic in size, as I just have too many photos to share.  I did my
best to organize things, with a post for each day there, and several separate posts that will
deal with individual aspects of the trip in more detail.

Also, I must apologize ahead of time for the quality of my photos.  Being on the move
constantly really does not bode well for careful photography, and many of the photos
were taken with my little Sony Cybershot, some on the sly, and many in poor lighting
situations.  Anyway...

Here we are, still in the US waiting for our flight...

A quick snake trip...

Went over the hill for a day to see what kind of fall snakes we could find.  We went
to a place that has never let me down.  For the first 4 hours, we got completely
skunked, everything was dry as a bone and there were no herps to be found
anywhere.  At the very last spot, the road of uber snakiness came through and
provided this little beauty.

Fun Fishing Weekend

So we did some serious angling this weekend,  Things started out good along the
Truckee, but we had some rain and then the river got really muddy and basically the
fish stopped biting all together, so yesterday, we hit the carp hole to see what was biting.
The results were good.

I hooked up first with a moderately sized MagiKarp. Sweet.