Cormorant

At a beach by the Pacific Ocean I saw this Japanese Cormorant (Phalacrocorax capillatus). It didn’t seem too scared of people. I wonder if it could have been one of the domesticated birds that are used for fishing by the masters at Nagara River in Gifu Prefecture?

Hyuga Beach – Miyazaki

It is easy to forget when you live all your life in Tokyo, that there is another Japan, a slower and in many ways more human Japan. Take this beach near Huyga city in the southern Miyazaki prefecture on the big island of Kyushu. I took these photos when I visited in September. This beach is very famous with surfers and I saw a few really good waves. Not being a surfer myself I don’t know how good it really is though. I do know that there are a few international surfing competitions here every year. It’s also not only humans, a few birds also feed of the beach, and these cute little birds got spooked when I got too close to them. I hope you like these relaxing (for me at least) photos! And by the way, this is the 1401st post!

Nagano Rice Fields – Almost Horizon

Living in Japan there was one thing that bothered me a little right from the start. I couldn’t put my finger on it until I started blogging about life here and actively looking at my photos, but when I did it hit me: there’s no horizon in Japan. Where I grew up the land was flat as an ironing board. Riding my bicycle to school I could just stand up on the pedals and see an additional couple of miles into the distance. I grew up surrounded by the horizon and didn’t realize how much I took that for granted until I moved to Japan where there’s mountains, buildings or hills in just about any direction you look except for out to the ocean. So even when I get a sort of half-way to the horizon vista, I get excited, like when I was traveling through Nagano Prefecture on a small country road and realized I could see at least a mile in any direction! So forgive me for these two shots of little or no artistic or documentary value. I just wanted to show you what makes my day, in a little way. Or, if you are into agriculture, you can notice the different stages of rice fields in these pictures, with one in a curious state, visited by white birds.

Young Birds

A just over two months ago I was taking a walk along Tokyo’s Sumida River and sat down to eat some bread in the warm spring sun. It didn’t take long before I was surrounded with some fabulously healthy looking birds. I think a healthy city has healthy looking birds! I know this is nothing special to do with Tokyo, but it’s great fun and good practice to go out and “shoot” some bird portraits every now and then. Some of these birds were so close I could have touched them! I know a lot of people don’t like pigeons so I only include one pigeon photo, but personally I love them.