Junior Baseball

I know baseball is huge in Japan and in a few other countries around the world but I have never gotten the hang of it. It’s mostly a mystery to me and the few games I have attended haven’t made me much wiser, but it’s a totally different thing when you walk past a junior league game and see the kids really giving all they’ve got in a game! I saw this match in progress (I think they were only training, since there were no dads in the audience, mostly moms) and had to take a few snapshots. I took these with my 135mm lens but most apart from the first photo the others are very much cropped so it looks like I had a 300mm lens at least. Typically I never crop photos in post production or editing. I try to compose as best as I can before I take the picture but sometimes I use cropping anyway, even though it goes against my own artistic principles, as far as a mere blogger is allowed artistic pretentions! Still, if you’re interested in Japanese baseball, stop by a junior team practice the next time you pass one in progress, and enjoy. It’s far more exciting, and totally free!

Spring in Tokyo – Kudanshita and Kitanomaru Park

It’s spring in Tokyo and I just can’t stop taking these snapshots of nature coming back to life here in the capital. Who said there is no nature in Tokyo? Well, I do, often, but here’s a few photos from around Kitanomaru Park in Tokyo’s Kudanshita, near Yasukuni Shrine and the Budokan arena. Kitanomaru Park is one of the best in Tokyo in my opinon, large, central and very clean, with ponds and even almost natural artificial water falls. There’s also plenty of cherry blossoms here in the spring, and sometimes it feels like half of Tokyo has decided to come here. The statue of the stern looking man is of Yajiro Shinagawa, an ex-samurai who became a very aggressive politician in Meiji-era Japan. He is famous for being very pro-emperor and anti-shogun, and both pro-foreign and anti-foreign having been a successful diplomat in Europe and being infamous for an attack on the British diplomats in Edo (the old name for Tokyo) in July 5th 1861. An interesting person. The old moat near the park is also a nice place to rent a rowing boat and get really up close to the cherry trees growing near the water. When I was there the park was full of people enjoying a sunny afternoon, although not every one was happy, I have a feeling the little boy in the last photo was getting bored with his sleeping father.

Nihonbashi 100 Years

It was a relatively warm spring day here in Tokyo yesterday and it made long for festival season to start up once again! Here are a few snapshots I took of the wonderful participants of the Nihonbashi 100 Year Anniversary festival last year. This part of the parade was the traditional festival wagons, with a bit unusual lions head shrine at the end! The kids pulling did a good job and even the smallest seemed to put their hearts in it. I took these photos with my favorite lens, the amazing 135mm f2.0 DC. Enjoy the weekend!

A Day At The Ocean – Yuigahama Beach

March 22nd was a public holiday here in Japan and a very rare chance these last few weeks for me to get a whole day to be totally unproductive. I love Tokyo above everything but sometimes even I have to get out of the concrete and yesterday I spent a whole day in Kamakura City, most of it on the famous Yuigahama Beach. Despite the brilliant sky it was still quite cold so I made sure to bundle up and of course forgot all about the sun screen lotion I should have applied once every 30 minutes to stay fresh.

Since it was a public holiday the beach was quite crowded, almost like one of the slower summer days, with fishermen enjoying the afternoon’s rest, couples, dogs, families and kids! On scene I was lucky enough to catch where these two adorable little kids playing! To cute for words, but I am sure this family must be pretty fantastic to raise kids like these!

It’s easy to forget, but Yuigahama Beach is a working beach with quite a few fishermen still making a living out of the ocean. The last two photos if of a man collecting wakame, or the green seaweed you’ll find in the miso soup bowls of many restaurants and hotels! At first I thought it must be a pretty rough hobby to go out and find the freshest sea weed, take it home, clean, cut and dry it all to have something green in your morning soup, but then I saw the prices they can charge for this! It almost made me reconsider my career. There were quite a few people collecting wakame that day, and the sea churns up an ever bountiful harvest for the savvy beach comber. Ecological and healthy, a good exercise and a great use of natural resources, what is not to like about these people collecting seaweed? Maybe I’ll bring a couple of extra bags next time. Usually I just fill them up with broken glass and pointy garbage (If everyone who went to that beach took away a kilo of garbage the beach would be clean every day all day). You might remember my compulsive cleaning of the beaches in Okinawa. I swear Holidays is what happens to other people!

Holidays is what the surfers at the beach were enjoying though. I’m not 100% on the surfers bit though, I’m vaguely aware of there being other sports involving waves and boards but I know nothing about them. Most of these very active people were well into their forties and over, and here I was thinking that surfing was mostly for cooler younger people. Shame on me! I liked it best when they were coasting out on their boards, laying down, in the photos I took it looks almost like they are just lying there, motionless on top of the water.