So an Elk Walks Into a Bar

When you visit Hiroshima, Myajima Island is a must see. I’ll be posting pictures of the shrine later on in life when I try and catch up on my photos, but for now, you get this deer we found on the island. They were all over the areas that the tourists frequent and I was kind of surprised to see everyone just running around and petting them. The deer didn’t care at all, and quite honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see some of the kids riding the bucks around.

We were off on an out of the way area sitting down and talking about how nice it would be to live on a beach when this character sneak attacked us ninja style and tried to steal wifey’s travel brochure for the area. No one messes with her travel brochures, I am not even allowed to throw them out at the end of the trip. Well this deer lost his battle with my wife, but he did make off with the corner of a couple of pages. You can see by the look in his eyes, that brochure was damn good!

Genbaku Dome

After Kyoto, we arrived in Hiroshima via the Tōkaidō Shinkansen; the first site we had to go to after checking our bags into the hotel was the Genbaku Dome, otherwise known as the Atomic Bomb Dome. The actual dome was 490ft away from the point of detonation excluding the 1,968 feet above the ground were the bomb known as “Little Boy” was detonated. Ever since that fateful day on August 6, 1945, the shrine has been left almost completely in its’ original state to serve as a memorial to those who died. I was amazed that a building built in April 1915 would even possibly be standing after such an event. You can see that the cracks in the building and the exposed edges have been sealed, but little else has been done.

The Final Push

Since I am leaving Japan a lot sooner than I thought, we have been trying to get out and see as many of the things we had planned on seeing during the last year we were here. This week we did a 3 day 2 night Shinkansen trip from Tokyo to Kyoto and Hiroshima. Quite honestly, it was nice to see all of this, but it is borderline work to jump off the trains, check your baggage at the hotel, and run from place to place trying to be as efficient as possible with so little time! Of course it will all be worth it once we process the photos, but it was a shame to not have more time to enjoy the sites along the way. We rode on the most modern Shinkansen, the N700, but I still think this E4 model pictured below is the coolest looking of them all.

Kyoto was our first destination along the worlds busiest hi-speed rail line, the Tōkaidō line. This line has a top speed of 270 km/h, but the N700 actually moves at 300 km/h (186 mph) on the adjacent Sanyō line. They look fast from the outside as they snake their way along the rails of Japan, but on the inside it is super smooth, and it doesn’t seem like you are really moving all that fast with the lack of noise and eardrum-busting pressure changes that I experienced with the German ICE trains when they enter tunnels. I read that the N700 is pressure sealed and when I was sitting next to the window, my leg could feel the frame of the train expand as it entered the middle of the tunnel and contract back into place as it exited the tunnel. I figure their must be a great deal of negative air pressure as it rushes through the tunnels, but I am no engineer, so that is just my theory..

Gion Shrine-

Kyoto is a breeze to navigate. For only ¥500 (about $5) you can get an unlimited all day city buss pass, and on top of that, they give you a great map with all of the routes and nearby sites. The most difficult part is deciding which shrines to see, and with barely 24 hours to spend in Kyoto and a lot of shrines being closed at night, this made it difficult to see everything that we wanted, but that was our fault. We definitely were able to hit the most famous sites though. I would say the Golden Pavilion is easily one of the most popular sites I see on Flickr. I always thought this was the tackiest shrine I have ever seen, and in person, it still looked tacky, maybe I am just a jerk, but I really wanted to create a different take on this popular site. I think the gold looks perfect when paired with black and white.

The only beef I really had with Kyoto is that you are not allowed to use a tripod at most of the sites. Demonicus, my beloved tripod, was none too happy to hear about this. The bastards that made those rules are lucky they avoided confrontation with him as he pretty much hurts anyone he touches.

Tsubakuro-Dake Twighlight

I haven’t been posting much and I really had to fight with myself to find the motivation to even process this photo real quick. I have roughly 5,000 photos in Lightroom from this year alone that I need to either delete or process and upload and I think this daunting task wears me out just thinking about it! Of course, many shots are multiple exposures, but that means a lot more work to propperly HDR, DRI, or both, then merge with the best exposure.

Here is another shot during our trip to the Japanese Alps taken with the last remaining light of the day, looking towards Tsubakuro-Dake. It was extremely cold by this time and I am highly impressed with the people who decided to sleep in those tents that night. I have never had a warm night camping on snow, and I have never even tried to do it on the edge of a windy ridge.

燕岳 Tsubakuro-Dake

This weekend we did an overnight trip to the Japanese Alps to climb Tsubakuro-Dake. I was amazed, in fact, it makes me quite frustrated to see such an awesome area and have to go back to big-city Tokyo. I would love to be living at the foot of these mountains because they are absolutely spectacular!!! Here is a 3-picture-HDR-stitch panorama taken from the peak, which is 2,763 meters high (9,065 ft.)

We hiked up in a thick mist, which is exactly how I imagined hiking through the mountains of Japan would be, and even hit snow midway up the trail. We really had no clue what the scenery looked like on the way to the hut because of the heavy mist and thick fog near the ridge line on the final push. We ended up staying at a really nice hut that served pretty damn good food. In the evening it cleared up for a little bit and saw the most unexpectedly amazing view, and realized the actual peak was a mere skip and a hop away. Anyways, here is a shot of the Enzanso hut at night with the full moon about to peer through the clouds.

Needless to say, it doesn’t feel right to stay in such a nice building near the top of a mountain, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the food, the comfortable rest, and the warmth since it was really cold at night. My dumbass forgot to check my camera ISO again and took all of my shots @ 800, which is pushing the D80 beyond its’ limit. I didn’t realize this until I was packing to head down. Doh!

I hear this is the easiest hike of all the peaks in the Japanese Alps. This hike wasn’t all that difficult, even in the snow. Below is a picture of the mid-mountain hut that gets supplies via a rickety old tram. I recommend the curry Ramen. I feel kind of bummed I will be leaving soon and will miss out on more trips to this area. If anyone is interested to see some amazing pictures and stories of some sketchy ascents of other peaks in the area; look no further than this blog right here. Just don’t blame me if you suddenly find that you have just lost track of the last couple of hours going through the posts.

Look, But Don’t Touch

When we were in Beijing, we took a quick trip on the subway to see some of the more prominent Olympic venues. The buildings were definitely out of this world, especially at night, with all of the progressive designs that were implemented into these buildings and the amazing color they are lit at night, they were very photogenic. However, Every single building is blocked off with an unsightly fence. This is the best picture I could get of this building, and the closest as well. Maybe they open the gates up at certain days, but this is one of the few dissapointments I had on our trip. I really wanted to get some good up-close shots of some of these venues..

The Blue Cube, Beijing-

Topographic

Here is another shot from Amber taken at the rice terraces of Ping’an. When her back is turn or she is distracted, I have been secretly putting ISO into her meals that I prepare for her, and this plan is starting to work out better than I had planned. I might cut back on her ISO soon since she has requested I order her a Gorilla Pod for her D40; I actually had to wipe a tear from my eye to hear should would like one, although, I may have talked her into a bit. Nevertheless, my plan is still working and I couldn’t be happier!

Horsey

What would a picture blog be without the obligatory picture of a lonely horse? Well here it is. Found this lonely guy in the middle of the rice paddies. I think he needs a friend. Amber surely wanted to be that friend being from Idaho and possessing two X chromosomes and all. She absolutely loves horses.

I have been playing around with the Nik Software Suite trial and this is another one of the results, the first being the previous picture in my blog. I am really enjoying this software.. A lot! I use a lot of layers to experiment with my pictures before moving on to the next step, and now I basically just scroll through a ton of filters that automatically show me what it will look like. The best part is that is applies the filters as a layer, so you can adjust the blending to your hearts content using this method. The sharpening plug in is so far the best sharpener I have used yet. Definitely expensive, but I think this is going to be worth it.