Today’s photo is of the sky this morning. It’s not a great picture, but I try to take at least a few photos every day. If nothing else, it keeps my muscle memory sharp! 🙂
I have been scanning in my old slide film from when I lived in Japan (1996-1999) and have been enjoying it quite a bit! I attribute the new-found enjoyment on my improved Lightroom skills. It’s a lot of fun recovering the images as best I can and it brings back a lot of good memories. I’m putting together an album of these images on Flickr so I’ll have them all in one location. Please take a look when you can!
Here are a couple recently edited photos:
“Ueno Station?” Tokyo, 1998“Station” Tokyo, 1997“View from Odaiba” Tokyo, 1997
Today I decided to take a break from taking photos, but I did get a bit of inspiration this evening and scanned some of my old slides.
These photos were taken with either my Minolta X-100 or my Minolta α507si on Fujifilm Velvia or Sensia (I edited the scans in Lightroom). When I lived in Japan, I loved roaming the city snapping photos. I can only imagine how many photos I would have taken if good digital cameras existed back then!
Shooting film was really great though. I enjoyed it a lot. Loading the film, taking the time to make more deliberate photos, and the anticipation when the film is at the lab was all part of the fun. I doubt I will go back to film, but I’m glad I had the experience.
I miss Japan! Unfortunately, I won’t be traveling there this summer 😢, but perhaps next year! I took this photo from the Tsutenkaku observation deck. In it you can see the tallest building in Osaka prefecture, “Abeno Harukas”.
One thing I love when traveling in Japan is that my wife (who was born and raised in Kansai area of Japan) really takes care of us and we get to do lots of cool things. It’s kind of like we have a tour guide wherever we go! She treats us so well, and for that I am truly grateful. 🙇 You know, I would be happy just hanging out in the city during our visits, but my wife often takes us around the country to see new places (and eat local foods). It’s kind of surprising for me (as someone who grew up in the U.S.) to realize that there are so many regional differences throughout the country of Japan. I love it! So much to explore… 🇯🇵
Photo info: SONY SLT-A77V, 35mm, f/2.8, 1/200 sec, ISO100 Enjoying Ramen at Kamukura
Food is good! And the food in Japan and Hawaii is hard to beat. One of the things I look forward to most when traveling are the vacation eats: meals at the local restaurants and sampling the regional cuisine. This past trip to Japan, I ate almost everything that was on my list:
Sushi
Okonomiyaki
Takoyaki
MOS Burger
Yakitori
Izakaya goodies
Ramen
Curry
Kushiyaki
The only reason I didn’t gain 10 lbs is that in Japan you tend to walk quite a bit to get around and I’m also glad that I got to run, swim, and surf to keep my metabolism up.
Besides the yummy food, we had a lot to drink, not only beer, but lots of iced coffee and canned coffee (I have to keep my caffeine addiction in check). I loved it all! Of course, the above list was just the Japan leg of the trip. In Hawaii we continued our constant feasting with:
More sushi
Poké
Korean BBQ
Plate lunch
Fresh tropical fruits
Smoothies
Himalayan/Nepalese
To finish off the vacation, we had dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant in Torrance! It was really cool to have my parents and my brothers together at one time, something that doesn’t happen very often since we live so far apart.
The meals we have while traveling are a great opportunity to not only try different flavors or revisit signature regional flavors, but also to make great memories around these special meals. Vacation Eats are a great opportunity to add a lot of color to the vacation (and also life in general). Food is good!
Like this:
LikeLoading...
My camera & photos
I use a Fujifilm X-series camera for most of the photos on this site and my Instagram. Why not pick one up for yourself?
