A few weeks ago I wrote a post about a band, GEEKS, playing outside Shibuya station who made me stop and listen, a rare occurance indeed.
I contacted them after to tell them about my blog post and several emails later I was invited to the last gig of their recent Japanese tour.
littleblackheart
If you are feeling sinister
I believe in magic – Outtake
On the night I shot the “I believe in magic (pt2)” picture I also shot some natural light shots of the model Nami. This was one of my favorites, something about the serious look in her eyes.
Like a rolling stone
The astute among you will have noticed a slight change in the blog layout and feel, the even more astute will have noticed a change in the address.
I believe in magic (pt2)
Another shot from my series “I believe in magic”. (see another HERE) This time thanks goes to the model, the lovely Nami, who I will miss a lot when she leaves for Canada at the end of the week. It was damn cold the night we shot this and I didn’t have an assistant so…
A 500 year old soba restaurant, enough sake to floor a sumo wrestler, very non-zen zen gardens and being picked up by girls in bars – My Kyoto trip
The Tokyo Reporter – Jake Adelstein
‘The Tokyo Reporter‘, a fantastic blog about the darker and more salubrious aspects of life in Japan is using one of my pictures (taken at the FCCJ during the authors talk about the book) in an article about Jake Adelstein, the author of ‘Tokyo Vice’ a book about the authors 12 year stint as a…
Ogose
Had a lovely hungover day out in Ogose in Saitama with Falsalama and his lovely girlfriend recently.
A beautiful wood with several waterfalls.
Just what the doctor ordered, fresh deep lungfuls of air and nature weaving her calming spell on me.
Of course, I managed to find a little darkness in all that beauty, as is the uchujin way.
The inevitable darkness I managed to find was the poster below, tacked onto a public toilet.It says that on the 2nd of June a 27 year old man from Yamagata prefecture disappeared in the woods. What with the suicide rate in Japan being what it is I hope he’s ok.
And finally, we have this scary looking guy, 鬼蜘蛛 ’Onigumo’ in Japanese, which means devil spider (!), Araneus ventricosus, a species of orb weaving spider. Near where we had parked the car at the bottom of the wood there were many of them. Apparently not dangerous, but I don’t trust an insect or arachnid with that colouring!
I highly recommend Ogose if you find yourself out that way in ‘Dasaitama’ ;-)
Oh! you little monkies!
Driving back from a day trip with falsalama and his girlfriend the other day, we came across a huge 100Y shop…….. I havent laughed so hard in a very long time. (he asked me not to put these up on the interwebs but I just can’t help it, self mockery is essential I do believe…
Geeks in Shibuya
Geeks guitarist and vocalist ‘Endo’ Geeks bassist and vocalist ‘Mitsu’ A few days ago I was changing trains in Shibuya and before I even got to the down escaltor from the Inogashira line I could hear raucous punk pop blasting out from somewhere, not unusual really for a city that brings a whole new meaning…
Yamanaka Lake
A set at Yamanaka lake from our trip on Saturday.
Something oddly melancholy about swan shaped boats in the late autumn sunset.
Dolphin meat, Fuji and Hiroshi Sugimoto (not in that order)
Dolphin Meat (イルカ) for sale in Numazu,Shizuoka
2 years ago…….pt.2 -special bonus edition
A special bonus edition of ‘from the archives pictures’, this time from two years ago, September 2007.
I’m increasingly interested in the progression of my own work (those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it) and the subconcious threads that run through a persons work, only noticable upon reflection some time later.
It is also a good excuse to publish some pictures that would otherwise not see the light of day.
A year ago…..pt.2
Dogenzaka,Shibuya,September 08 My obsession with sleeping people continues unabated, but this one is from September ’08, part of my ‘A year ago’ series.
I send my thoughts to far off destinations
The Flower Of The Dead
死人花 – The Flower of the dead
I know its really autumn now.
Not just because I’m starting to feel the looming of S.A.D.,the change in the temperature requiring no fan to sleep or the noticably shorter days.
No, it is the Lycoris radiata, Red Spider Lily, Cluster Amaryllis – ‘The Flower Of The Dead’, that can been seen flowering at this time of year that signals that the Autumn equinox is only days away and that we have almost completed yet another yearly cycle of seasons.
This beautiful flower originally came from China but only the female variety made it to Japan so missing its male half the plant cannot reproduce via pollen transfer as most other flowers do.
Highly posionous, the bulbs contain toxic alkaloids that if ingested cause paralysis of the central nervous system and ultimately death. For this reason they were often, in pre cremation times, planted in graveyards to prevent wild animals eating the corpses.
The stalks however contain some edible proteins and so it was often planted on the narrow paths between the rice paddies to be used as emergency food if the rice harvests were poor.
The flower has many names here in Japan, some say as many as 900:-
“Manjushage” 曼珠沙華 is taken from a line in the Buddhist Lotus sutra, refering to a red flower
“higan-bana” 彼岸花、flower of the autumn equinox
“shibito-bana” 死人花, the flower of the dead
“jigoku-bana” 地獄花、flower of hell
To name but 4.
In Japanese mythology it is the flower that grows along the banks of the river that one must cross after death or the flower that grows in hell.
There are many haiku written about this flower where it is often assosiated with lonliness and death.
Above all though it is really beautiful, I remember the first time I saw one a few years ago as I was walking to work one bright autumn day, it made me stop in my tracks.
I have always taken photos of them whenever I have seen them since that first time, this year I even saw a white one for the first time. Which I believe is called a Lycoris albiflora, a natural hybrid.
Lycoris albiflora
They always leave me feeling slightly melancholy but awed by the fact that even someone as cynical as me can still be rendered speechless and motionless by a simple flower.
No one emerges triumphantly
Ah, sleeping guy, nice light, geometric elements. One for the collection…(crouch) (click) (click) wait a sec, WTF?? Is that a tube coming from his………and leading into that plastic bag………….????
Jim and all that jazz – 5D mkII video editing
I haven’t really been using the video function on my 5D, I’m not a videographer and I already have ridiculous amounts of hard drives filled with photo files, last thing I need is to start getting into HD video with all the huge files and possible new video cards mess that will get me into.
However, recently I was browsing my recent pictures folder and discovered I had 2 videos that would work together rather well.
‘I’ll just layer them together’ I naively thought.
Just drop them into some video editing software, cross fade between the two and voila.
Of course, it wasn’t that easy……it never is.
Cue several hours of google searches and transcoding video to come up with the short and not particularly impressive video at the top of this post.
I can see this whole thing is going to cause me headaches, but I love a challenge so be prepared for more.
*This video contains scenes of Jim O’Connell used without his permission and should , as with all things Jim, have an 18+ rating ;-)*
Yasukuni-Update
Yuko Katsuta and Uchujin, The bridge overlooking Yasukuni dori, august 15th 2009 If you’ve read my previous post on Yasukuni August 15th then hopefully you’ll remember the wonderful old woman I mentioned meeting on the bridge overlooking the entrance to the shrine. Well today I arrived home to find a letter from her. A point…
Yasukuni-August 15th
August the 15th is the anniversary of the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II.
Every year on this day 1000’s of people go to the controversial Yasukuni shrine in Kudanshita to pay their respects to the war dead (including the 14 class A war criminals whose souls are intered there).
2 years ago pt.1……Like crazy animal with doggy style
That’s quite a paint job on that scooter!
A year ago……pt.1
Inspired in part by motionid and his ‘from the archives’ posts over on his blog, I have been looking back through photos from a year ago, seeing if there are pictures I didn’t like at the time which I like now and attempting to see if there has been any progression/changes in my work. So…
On the 7th Day
On the 7th day the omnipotent, omnipresent one rested, but His Horned alter-ego didn’t and neither do I. A series of photos of poledancers for my series “On the 7th day”
Jim O’Connell in the New York Times
My good friend Mr Jim O’Connell’s photo was on the front page of the New York Times web edition yesterday. There is much more to come I’m told.He’s already blogged about it here so I am just posting this to say congratulations old chap and look forward to seeing more.
Toast the living and the dead who’ve gone before me
From a recent Lucky Strike promotion where one cigarette in the box had a message on it.
It’s killed at least 3 family members that I know of.
In a CT scan I had recently some ‘nodes’ were detected in both of my lungs that could possibly maybe be the beginnings of emphysema. (The Doctor didn’t even mention it as the CT scan was for something unrelated, only when I asked him about it did he suggest ‘smoking less’).
And yet, this picture is of a cigarette I smoked.
Helpless drug addict? weak willed pathetic idiot?? Loser???
If so I’m not alone.
One of us dies every 6.5 seconds worldwide , more even than the one every 15 minutes who commit suicide here in Japan, and yet that’s effectively what we are doing.
I stopped for 2 years in my twenties, but started again and within 2 days of the first puff in 2 years I was back on a pack a day.
Almost everyone I know who has tried to quit has fallen off the wagon.
Fuck this is depressing, I’m off to drink a coffee and smoke a fag.
EDIT!!!!
Lest anyone else should think that this post is overly serious or that I am genuinely depressed about this.
Here (courtesy of my Public Relations officer Mr Bill Hicks) is what I really think about smoking.