Back home

As suspected I did not have time for public blog entries during my travel mode. Returned to Finland yesterday.

I have ton of pictures though, and will post a link here to my finished photo gallery when I have organized them (4500 pictures taken during the 10 weeks I was in Japan; about 3000 left after initial bad file deletion).

Fade to black

This blog is probably finished now, unless I find free network access that I can actually legally use for the rest of my trip. I will react to emails, but MSN/Skype are no longer options.

What happened up to Wednesday:

- Monday: studying record attempt, not quite there (5 hours of classwork and 3 hours of private lessons, and 3 hours of study home on top of that)
- Tuesday: cleaning up, packing, some studying, bird stalking (swan)
- Wednesday: bird stalking in the morning (I like the ton of pictures I got of crane that happened to be in the right spot at the right time), study, final cleanup today

Plan for future (for a change, I have actually booked hotel rooms so I actually will follow this plan, roughly at least):

Thursday: Some study, graduation ceremony, 850km on Shinkansen to Hakata where I arrive late in the evening.
Fri-Mon: Something in Kyuushu (not quite sure what yet; will read guidebook on the train and decide then :)
Tue: Travel Hakata->Tokyo (1175km, will take 6 hours or bit over due to change of trains; uncertain what to do with the leftover time)
Wed: Wandering around Tokyo
Thu: Heading to Kyoto, bit of wandering there if there is time (515km, 2.5 hours or so)
Fri: World expo (I'm really looking forward to seeing the 580km/h Shinkansen prototype)
Sat: Return to Tokyo in the afternoon

..and lurk there until the happy end when I head back to cooler climes. Japan is too hot in May, the temperature has been mostly in the 25-ish range for the last month or so during day when not cloudy; even on rainy days, 20-ish degrees.

Oh no, it's the crazy foreigner with big camera! 

Crane and crow. 

Swan swimming in the pond near student apartment. 

Life goes on

Friday - wet shopping (As noted in the daily entry).
Saturday - excellent weather, I am still uncertain what I did (went out and took pictures of birds/flowers, but just one sample here.. Definitely need the zoom extender for birds though).
Sunday - Nagoya Go Festival.. Went there only for the afternoon, but had lots of fun. Pretended to be shodan and won 2 games out of 3. (First one I lost by one "that corner dies.. oh. it does not.") Lots of pros out there (including Yumezawa Yukari 5? dan from HNG and sunday Go TV program in Japan).

After that, walked around and took lots of semirandom pictures, and went to Sakae's Sunshine City for dinner. Nice day, unfortunately what I SHOULD have been doing is studying, not playing with my new camera or sightseeing. Oh well. Maybe I will study some more during the night (I have still at least hour's pending kanji homework, I should wake up in 8 hours, AND I should reply to assorted emails.. *sigh*)

Random view, I liked the colors (Nagoya tower in background). 

Random view, for some reason pleasing to my eyes. 

Prams are cheap in Japan. 

Yumezawa Yukari giving autographs. I have picture of her with me too now!  

Hahaha, he's trying to speak in Japanese! (seriously though, these kids saw my camera and tried to run.. no luck.) 

Second impression - army of organizers. 

First impression - this is big (1/2 of tables shown). 

Japanese roof decoration (playing with the telezoom). 

The ode to shopping, part N

As seen from pictures, I have moved to stalker-mode remote photography approach. Right now only 9x equivalent zoom (no extender yet), but I'll upgrade when I feel the need for more toys (probably before leaving Tokyo anyway - no sense leaving points lying around on my point card!). Oh well. Spent hour of quality time photographing freaks at Nagoya station, with only limited success.

The 70-200mm lens is nice, although heavy. The shopping was painful experience, I was considering two alternatives (cheap one and the one I bought) for almost two hours. Finally decided that going with more expensive is seldom regretted, and spent too much money ;) The amount I spent was enough for them to want to call Luottokunta back home if it was ok to sell it; the last big Visa purchase only required local authorization, but guess this one was bit bigger.. Nasty part was, I waited like 15-20min for the authorization to be processed.

Here's to hoping that I won't purchase any more expensive stuff this trip, already 3k eur over budget and still almost 3 EXPENSIVE weeks until I return home (not living in student dorm for 2 weeks -> hotel costs are high, sigh)..

Smoke (or actually, water vapor) by evening. 

Nagoya wildlife at it's strangest by night. 

On a break (1/10 second, 325mm film equivalent zoom in the night). 

And I have had question of "why" few times

Reasons (in random order):

- because I wanted it :) (considered buying the similar model last year in Japan too, and now had weak moment and could not resist the temptation)

- night shots (G2 is clunky and has bad results more often than I would like, see below for one example. Optically, it's impossible to get equally good pictures with such small lens, but the lack of focus is disappointing).

- focus (see above; the automatics have caused me to lose quite some pictures over the last 3 years, and the manual focus in G2 is a joke. also, automatic focus in the 350D is better)

- startup time (G2 'boots' 3 seconds, which drains battery during the boot+shutdown, AND makes taking pictures rapidly after seeing something difficult)

- flexibility (I wanted basically to try some lenses / things, something for which G2 offers very limited alternatives. I'm right now thinking of getting EF x1.4 extender and 70-200mm IS L USM glass in addition to current Sigma - the combination will provide 156mm-448mm 35mm film equivalent, or 5-13x zoom in layman terms WITH image stabilization. I figure this is nice if I ever start photographing people or animals. Up close people are usually bit on the shy side, and so are animals!)

Oh well. As a friend said, some people waste money in cars, so I need an outlet for excess cash too (this camera project is bit below 3k euros by the time I have all I want). Additionally, with all the time I have spent taking photos, this isn't insanely huge investment (unless some of the equipment breaks early on, and obviously I hope it won't).

Comparison shot with old camera. 

Shopping, a recipe for happiness?

I was quite bored again on tuesday, which is typically a very bad thing. After school ended for the week, I went home and was bit bored again. Tuesday is fuzzy, I think I only thought about cameras or something (.. again..).

Finally on the wednesday, the things moved, and not very positively (For my wallet). Called Visa back home 'hey, I'll spend bit more money this month' and bought Canon 350D (Kiss Digital N here, Rebel XT in States) as well as Sigma's EX-class 18-50mm 2.8f lens after re-reading reviews for HOURS in front of Bic Camera (thankfully wireless, as always, is free). I had done the same thing at home too, but instead of Tamron 28-75mm 2.8f I went for the Sigma as I figured I wanted the wide-angle.

So far results are mixed; 4.0f+ pictures are crystal clear, at 2.8f there is some blur on edges (not bad), but more annoyingly, the bright lights seem to cause fairly often blue chromatic aberrations (see the picture). Optically the lens is decent, but I was expecting bit more for 500+ euro lens. Oh well, Canon didn't have anything comparable, so I just have to deal (closest was 16-35mm which costs arm and leg and weighs twice as much as the Sigma).

Today (Thursday) I almost went to Nagoya to shop for more camera goods.The day was too hot to be outside much, but I shipped 24kg of books (manga, few japanese books, some study materials) home using ground-mail. In late afternoon, instead of Nagoya, went for a walk from Daijuji-temple (home temple of Tokugawa Ieyasu) to my apartment (about 7km as birds fly). Was quite fun, took from 5pm to 10pm or so, although I stopped on the way frequently as I took maybe 200 pictures or so to test the new camera. My favourite picture of the lot was the random nameless temple picture by night, too bad about the two lights shining in the area, otherwise it'd be as close to what I wanted as it could be.

Friday involves rain, so I suspect the order of the day is shopping. And I have nasty feeling it will be expensive shopping as well (tele zoom lens for the Canon as well as camera bag, maybe battery grip, remote trigger and whatever.. *sigh*).

I should find the motivation to study a bit, haven't done anything yesterday (camera fever) and today only bit less than one hour.

Random temple at night. Scary thing is, exposure is 20 seconds and the woman in middle is fairly crisp - she stood there praying for minutes during middle of night. 

Okazaki is like America, except smaller. Small houses, small cars (but lots of them, more than people). 

Now's my chance - grab a train and run? 

In Japan, everything needs a mascot (And I mean EVERYTHING, I have hundred pictures to prove this if you want proof ;>). This one's delivery service like UPS. (Main competitor is black cat if I recall correctly). 

Fitness club bus with blooming whatevers. 

Dead neighbour is the best neighbour

I am not insanely happy with my neighbours right now. One seems to like banging something at walls in middle of night, and the nastier one speaks (in chinese) on VOIP or something during night. I think neighbour hunting season starts soon, although I will have a chat with the VOIP guy first (the random wallbanger is not frequent enough to prevent sleep, but loud speaking from the room next door is).

That said, the weekend was mostly interesting. On Saturday I went to Okazaki castle again, and saw fuji (wisteria in English I think) and some other assorted flowers blooming. Quite nice. On Sunday the forecast was bad, so I planned on playing Go at local Go club, but unfortunately they were on vacation or something and I went to Nagoya's Go club instead. It rained a lot the whole day :p.

Monday involved just furious studying, as I had 8 hours of it with people (5 in class, 2 private lessons and one hour of unmoderated talking) and some private activity on top of that. The day's first not-so-pleasant surprise was lack of open restaurants - it is Golden Week now in Japan, which means that most people are vacationing, so all reasonable lunch restaurants nearby were closed. So we ate boxed lunch, *sigh*. I assume that's on the menu for much of the rest of the week too, unless I'm luckier than I think.

This week there is a Go tournament in Nagoya on Sunday, and I intend to head there for fun. The days after Tuesday involve no school, but as all Japanese are vacationing I do not feel like being in middle of crowds -> I probably just study or do something else equally boring.

Next week school ends on Thursday, and I am still debating when to actually leave Yamasa - I have paid my rent only up to Tuesday, but I think I will pay one or more nights more. The infrequent picture flooding will most probably stop when I am in in travel mode, as I will depend on the unsecure wlan points for access and doing excessive file transfers is not good idea.

Rough plan for next week and start of the one after:
- 12.5. Thursday (at the latest) to Hakata　１５２8→２０２０ or so
- Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Monday:
Hakata/Nagasaki/nature/onsen-project (not yet decided)
- Tuesday morning I head to Tokyo (or maybe Monday afternoon, not decided yet). Scary how it takes just 6h 12min (with 'slow' hikari class shinkansen) to go the whole 1170 km of Hakata-Tokyo.. of course plane would be faster, but this is cheap with JR rail pass.
- 17.5. Tuesday lurking around Tokyo
- 18.5. Wednesday -> Kyoto
- 19.5. Thursday Expo
- 21.5. Shinkansen-> XXX -> Tokyo
- 25.5. Return to 'real life' (*sniff*)

Path in Okazaki park by night. 

Fuji in Okazaki park by night. 

Random Nagoya-by-night shot. 

Everything has mascot in Japan (Nagoya TV station).