A certain Kendall made a good point recently about the lack of people in a lot of my pictures. Don’t be fooled, there are lots of people over here, but maybe my subconscious reasoning behind all my landscape-only pictures is that my camera/camera skills aren’t good enough to take decent pictures with people in them. They always wind up looking like someone just wandered into the frame. The other thing is, if people see me taking a picture, they throw the peace sign about 100% of the time, and it’s kinda lame to scroll through 50 photos of everyone doing the peae sign. I mean, it’s fine, but I like the candids. Rather, I like good candids. For every 50 non-posed pictures I take of people, 1 or 2 might not be blurry. I think it takes a better photographer to capture people in an interesting way. I totally suck at taking photos, so I usually rely on really pretty places to do the work for me. But in any case, it wasn’t ever my intention to post National Geographic level shit on this blog, so I’ve decided to be less afraid of random people in photos. That being said, don’t worry about the above photo or the below photo. This is in Saga, in the mountain rice terraces that are totally cool.
there's nobody in this one either, but to clarify, there weren't a lot of people around here
This actually turned out to be an amazing afternoon. We went down to Saga to get a vibe off of some rice farming, and after maybe 20 minutes of honest work in a paddy, we spent the next 2 hours grilling beef and getting boozed with the rice farmers. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any genki-er, I heard some music that sounded like the Beatles coming from down below on one of the terraces, so I went over to investigate. Turns out, these two Japanese guys in their mid-40s had a pretty great Beatles cover band going, and it was all the Beatles songs I actually like, which means the old ones, and they were turning it out, just guitar and bass and mic. I mean, what kind of band practices on the side of a hillside rice paddy? And did you see the picture at the top? It was all misty and mysterious looking, like we were waaay above all the houses and stuff, so if I expected to hear any music, it would have been like a koto or something. But no way, it was She loves you yeah yeah yeah, and they actually played that one twice for us. And they were good too! They also played Anna, which is one of my favorite songs, Beatles or Arthur Alexander or these guys. What happened was, we all rolled down there and embarrassed the shit out of them and turned their practice into a private concert. If you read the Kagoshima post, I was saying how Japan is rife with the most hilarious anachronisms on the planet, and this took the ship, listening to Beatles covers being played by rice farmers in the distant hills of Saga, and to boot, they had shelled out for a classic McCartney violin bass and a vintage George Harrison-style Rickenbacker. Everyone was holy cow-ing for the rest of the day. But guess what? I didn’t get a single damn picture of these guys. Other people did, so if they wind up on facebook, check them out. Also, if these guys tour the US, check them out. But yeah, if I had stones and wood, I would have built a torii at the base of this hill, demarcating a religious experience and making it a truly holy mountain. I might rank this particular performance in the top 10 of any concert I’ve been to, maybe top 3 in terms of the weirdest ones. Who knows. I’m not so down with top-anything lists any more. I still like reading them, but only if they’re by incoming Kenyon freshmen on facebook.
not the beatles
The pad
The Yakiniku Man Van!
Yeah old guy! later got mad when he discovered the Shochu bottle was empty
Mariko and Johnny Cash, featuring the heavenly light
Anyhoo, later that day, me and Yusuke and Mitch found a holy mountain to the north of Nagasaki that we summitted and took pictures on. This was technically the first, but actually the second holy mountain we would go to.
Yusuke is mad cause I'm so fast
"kami ni sundeiru" -- Yusuke, telling me gods live here. cooool
Later on, our chinese buddy retorted that 'the yellow mountain is better.' well, no shit. but the entrance to THIS mountain was next to a Family Mart. I'm pretty sure you have to take a helicopter and then float on the back of a mischievous turtle to get to the Yellow mountain in China. I'd still be down to go, but i mean
This mountain possessed an unearthly quality, and on 2 sides it overlooked a massive sprawl of humanity. The views here may not be as trapped in time as some more remote parts of China, but in a way that's an enhancement. it was like an ancient skyscraper
resting point on the way down. By the way, i know 'ancient skyscraper' is a dumb way to describe a mountain. My english has seriously lapsed since I've been here though. Don't worry about it
It was raining in Nagasaki, plus my camera had like a flu or something, so I couldn’t take a lot of pictures.
brief stopover in Nagasaki's chinatown. Not a legit chinatown.
Let me explain something here. This chinatown was NOT loud, steamy, crowded, impossibly large and full of twisty streets, uncomfortable and cheap. It was clean, relatively slow-moving, kinda smal and grid-like, there was soothing music being piped in from outdoor speakers, and it was really expensive. In other words, the most Japanese chinatown in the world. I didn’t even see any Chinese people, nor did the Chinese kids I was with. Some guy did bark at me not to take pictures of his wacky merchandise though. THAT was pretty legit Chinatown. Other than that though, the place didn’t really hold my interest. The food was pretty good, but after lunch I was more interested in checking out Dejima.
A meal of truly Olympic proportions!
Right Hemi? Right??
stoked to not be trapped inside Dejima for 19 years
The expression I’m making is mainly due to the fact that earlier that morning when we were leaving the ryokan, I stepped into a part of my pants that was not a leg and instantly created shorts. I thought that the picture would reveal the really terrible pants-surgery I had to undertake on the highway, but luckity it doesn’t dip below the knee. Thank god! Anyway, that was last weekend, and I’ll get up to date on the fun that was had this past weekend shortly. Don’t give up on me yet folks. I got another month left!
