my last weekend!

well, it's 9:45 Sunday evening and I fly out tomorrow afternoon, which means leaving here around 11am. I spent the entire weekend hangin out with super amazing fun people doing super amazing fun stuff and i have yet to pack my bags. Lets see...Friday Jessie from Scotland (previously blogged about) took the train in at the same time that Amy (David's friend from Hawaii) took the bus in and we picked them up at the station. Spent the afternoon at the beach swimming, frisbeeing, hurting ourselves and having a great time. After the beach experience we went out to dinner and had some okonomiaki, one of my favorite japanese goods. Kinda like a floppy omellete...but then at the same time nothing like that! hehe, it's good!

Saturday came and Amy's friend Kanoko (hope I spelled that right) came in from Tokyo to hang out too. We ended up back at the beach with the whole crew including the Andako (hope I spelled that right too!) family from Tokyo who was previously mentioned in my blog as well. There were a ton of us there that day and by the end most of us were sitting in the wet sand covering eachother in it and getting as dirty as possible! So fun, but so dirty! So, instead of coming back to the house with a bunch of dirty folks we decided that it was off the public bath for us! My first experience with the public bath...quite a good one indeed! For those of you who don't know, it's very traditional here to have public baths (almost all hotels have them) where you go get all cleaned up in a row of little sit down shower stalls and then spend a bit of time chillin with the guys naked in the hot tub; a really big hot tub with a few levels. Quite an experience indeed, one that I've very glad that I was able to have before I left. Then that evening everyone came over for a fabulous dinner made by David's lovely mother and Mrs. Kurata (the AMAZING cook). It was a spectacular spread of lovely food to feed an army, which is good cause there was an army of us here. Then, after a killer game of around the world ping-pong (if you don't know what this is we have got to play sometime), we all went outside and shot off some fireworks! Fireworks are much less seasonal here, or so it seems. Since there were a few friends of the family here David and I gave up our room and we spent the night at the Kurata's house along with Amy and Kanoko. Mrs. Kurata, the amazing woman she is, had some goodies for us when we got there and then we watched a few of the music videos and photos slideshows that David and I have done while here and stayed up tll 2am playing cards.

Sunday morning we woke up and had our first "real breakfast" since being in Japan, according to Mr. Kurata. Which means fish, rice, soup, veggies salad and pretty much a ton of other stuff, finished off with a breakfast dessert of a slice of peach, peach jello kinda stuff (homemade) and vanilla ice cream. Seriously, Mrs. Kurata is a machine when it comes to cooking stuff, she can make and does make everything! After breakfast we had a lovely cherry pit spitting contest which I took third place in, david second, and mr. Kurata first (he was the one that suggested the contest, now I know why). And the rest of our last day in Japan was spent just goofin around with friends, chasing monkies, playing badmiton, memory card games, eating more of Mrs. Kurata's amazing food, and goodbyes. It's amazing how easy it is to get close to people, even with a language barrier. I can't even express how blessed I was to be able to experience family in Japan. Thousands of people visit Japan a year and I am sure that I'm among a very small percentage that actually get to spend considerable amount of time with Japanese families, sleeping in their homes, eating with them, playing their silly games, and stumbling through conversation (not with everyone was it stumbling, some spoke good english). I wish that I could just bring some of these people that I met home with me so that you could all meet them and know what lovely people they are. Or maybe you guys just need to come here and find your own Japanese friends! They have all been invited to the states, so maybe someday....

Alright, well I need to go pack, this will be my last blog from Japan! Thanks to all who have read and commented over the past two months here. It's been soo much work, but sooo much fun at the same time! I'm not sure how to end this, so I'll just have to say "OPEN UP JAPAN!"

Gowda Mowrning Mista Neptune!

A Tribute to Mori-san, the gardener that comes around the Neptune's place a few times a week yelling "Gowda Mowrning Mista Neptune!!" repeatedly until someone comes to the door. My personal favorite was the day that he drove over here and woke us all up to let John know that he wouldn't be working that day because it was raining. He has three dogs of his own so he always shows up with pockets full of dog treats, so Coco and Pelle go craaazy whenever he shows up. Anyway, here he is!

just another day in Tokyo

Spent the day in Tokyo today. We had a meeting with the man that's funding this whole DVD project, so it was great for me to finally meet him. He's a great guy named Goto San. We took a copy of the videos that David has finished so far and the two slideshows that I've put together and showed them to him and a few of the people at his office. They liked them very much and, from what I could tell, were very impressed. It's encouraging to hear that someone that wasn't involved directly in the (wow, there is a giant bug crawling on my screen right now) making of the videos likes them and was actually impressed. Especiallly for my slideshows, after making them and looking at them a million times they seemed so normal to me, but the guys at the office thought the photos were awesome. So, yay for that!

After the meeting David and I walked around Tokyo a bit. We dropped into a gallery of photos by one of their friends that does pinhole camera photography. (http://www.edophoto.com/) He has some really great stuff. It is all done with a pinhole camera which makes it even more impressive in my opinion. After the gallery we went to eat at a hamburger steak place, YUMMY food and lots of it for under ¥1000 ($10), which is pretty amazing for Japan, especially for Tokyo. The rest of the afternoon/evening we just wondered the streets looking at shops and cute girls..of which there were way too many today! I could seriously go for a Japanese girl...if only I could communicate a bit better! Oh well, we'll see....

I guess that's it for now

long time no blog

well, as two of my lovely blog readers have pointed out to me, yes I have not blogged in a while. Life got busy for me and boring for blogging since all I was doing was working on getting photos edited, organized and made into slideshows for the DVD project. In fact, between the 21st and 27th I didn't even take any photos to speak of; how crazy is that! But lucky for you, I've had an exciting weekend! So, now I can blog without boring you.

Let's see here, I'll start with Friday, since I went to another whaling adventure. This time around was not an "event" like that last one, so it was just me there as a photographer, no school groups, groups from the old folks home, or anything. Just a few people watching and me takin over visually. They started a little before 6, which stinks since I got there at 6, but oh well. Considering I've been getting up closer to 9 or 10 recently, I thought that I did pretty good getting there when I did. It was a beautiful day, foggy, but the sun split through a few times and made me very happy. This time around I was so much more focused (no pun intended) and able to make much better images than last time when I was somewhat in shock the entire time. Turned into black and white I think that they are much less disgusting, so I'll show them here. I'm actually very happy with the images that I was able to make there. Another very interesting difference this day was that since they started so early they had a breakfast break. It gave such a feeling that it's just another job, ya know. Maybe you had to be there, but it was an even better experience than last time. I think that once I get them organized a bit more I'll post a gallery of just whaling images on my site (we'll see what happens)
These ladies craked me up, telling secrets at the whale meat sale, haha!

Saturday was uneventful, but today, Sunday I went to church this morning. I haven't been since I got here, but finally was informed of a church and I had time to go, so i went. It was a very traditional Anglican church in Japanese, but it was still nice to be at church, either way. It was pretty small which was good since they asked me to stand up and introduce myself and stuff! There is a doctor that goes there with his wife, he speaks English, so he translated for me a bit. After church Diane (David's mom) took me to the home of a family that does Indigo Dying of fabric for kimonos, table clothes, or pretty much anything. The process was nearly lost, but the the father of the guy who does it now rediscovered the process and started doing it many years ago. He's now passed away, but his son has continued the tradition, teaching others to do it as well. The lady in this photo was preparing the fabric for dying by stenciling the design onto the fabric with a sort of rice substance that keeps the fabric from turning blue in those areas. The whole process is pretty incredible. They have a giant in-ground vat of indigo dye that they have to stir at least once a day to get oxygen into it so that it doesn't die. They did not do a lot of work today so I dind't get the whole experience, but it was still a pretty cool thing. They dyed one small hanky for a young girl that went there with us. She did the stenciling and then dyed it herself, it was pretty awesome for her. Anyway, indigo dying experience, pretty amazing!

So, I guess that's it for the blog tonight. I have one week left in Japan, so I'll try to blog at least one or two more times. Thanks for reading...and to the faithful blog readers that complained after a week with no blog...you guys are great! Oh yeah, and I'm sayin it here..GO ITALY, WIN THE WORLD CUP! Ciao-

i got whale blood on me

So, I this blog is actually from yesterday, I just kinda got too tired and didn't do it, so I am doing it a day late, but NOT a dollar short!

Alright, so the town of Wada is about 30 minutes around the horn west and north from Kamogawa, a lovely little town with surf big enough to hurt a man (when it's big). The road to Wada is home to my favorite sign in Japan (not yet photographed) of a man, apparently with a broken leg, getting mauled by a giant wave next to the road. I'm sure the real meaning us much less dramatic, but whatever, it's there and soon a photo of it will be viewable here. So, Wada is a great place with good surf, great signs, and great people as well as having the privilege of being one of only 3 places in Japan with a whaling permit. They are only allowed 26 whales per year and only during a very strict season. June 21st happened to be the day that the whaling season started in Wada, and I had the chance to be there for it. Diane (David's mom) knows the wife of the man that runs the program there so she called the night before and I was given special "sanitized rubber boots only" access to take photos. So, Tuesday evening I went to the store and bought some brand new, shiny, black, rubber boots and I was ready! Not quite as ready as the guys working there who had cleats on their boots to keep from slipping when things got messy...like I did.

Wednesday morning we got there a little before 8am which was really nice compared to the usual 5am start that the whalers usually do. This day was a late exception because a group of local fifth graders was coming so they had to start late. The whale is left out over night floating just outside the harbor tied up with a slit down it's back to let the sea water cool down it's insides a bit before they prepare the meat.

So, a little after 8am, after the kids arrived, they began to drag in the nearly 10 meter long beaked whale using huge wenches rigged up at the back of the covered area where they'd do the work. There were two scientists there who took all the whales measurements and did tests on everything, at least it appeared to me that they were checkin on everything. With long handled razor sharp knives and sharpeners attached to their belts about 10 guys began the two hour long process of turning a 10 meter whale into manageable, sellable chunks of meat. They worked so quickly and efficiently, obviously they'd done this before, that it was hard to predict the next move to get into position to take the photos. I won't go into detail for those with weak stomachs, but I've never seen so much blood at one time. Oh yeah, and the title of this blog, I did actually get whale blood on my clothes and a piece of whale meat hit my camera which was super rad to me! Yeah, I'm weird, I know.

All together I was there a little over 5 hours, the time it took for a 10 meter, who knows how many ton, whale to be brought from the water and sold out the backdoor of the same place it was "processed". I was talking to a photographer from the AP that was there shooting also and I had a realization that it was truly a privilege to be there on that day, one that few outsiders have ever had before. I got some pretty cool/amazing photos, but for the sake of those reading that wouldn't appreciate them (Cheryl) I am not going to post any of the whale on here. If you want to see them e-mail me. Here is a photo of some of the school children reacting to touching the whale.

There are those that say "save the whales" and even go as far as protesting against it, or so I've seen in the past. I don't have a firm stance on the issue, and one would think that something like this experience would cause me to have an opinion about it, but it didn't actually. I agree that if whaling where not under a strict moratorium here in Japan, only allowing a certain number of whales at certain time of the year, then maybe there would be a problem with bringing in too many or something. But as it stands now, it's a big fish, to be completely honest. The way that the whalers handle every part of the whale and put it to use in some way or another is even more comforting and makes it even easier to handle. If you think about it the ocean is only so big, and whales are soooo big, that if nobody ate them they could like fill up the entire ocean and pretty soon there would be no water, just whale. I don't know where I'm going with this, I don't really have a point to make or anything, I guess I'm just rambling...what' a blog for anyway! I guess I'm basically saying that I witnessed the process of cutting up a whale so, maybe now I should develop a strong opinion for or against "whaling". You, reading this, do you have an opinion oh whaling? hum..we'll see what happens.

Masako Nishikawa

This is Masako Nishikawa, an incredible dancer and actress that was kind enough to perticipate in the Kyoto video shoot. She was absolutely amazing. This is the woman costume; she played a man for the video as well, with an equally amazing costume.

bloggin from the bus

So, it's Friday evening and since I'm just sitting on a little bus driving back to Tokyo from Kyoto right now I decided that this would be a good time to write out my blog that I'll be able to post whenever I actually get back to Kamogawa. (turns out it is now Saturday afternoon)

After a really long day of shooting yesterday we were all super tired today, but it was a lite day. We went back to the temple that we shot at yesterday to just film some scenery around there for insert shots. I had a good time just sitting next to a pond watching frogs, lily pads, flowers, dragon flies, whatever it is that dragon flies turn in to (really creepy), and GIANT bees. It was a lot of fun and so peaceful. When we finished there we decided to do the tourist Kyoto thing.

Kyoto is full of pretty amazing old buildings and towers and gates and stuff. So we went out to eat at a place near the "largest gate in Kyoto". It's kinda funny actually because it is a HUGE gate that could keep out a massive army but the wall that it used to go with is now gone. So now it's just a giant 'protect you from the universe' gate sitting there screaming "if you want to get in 'GO AROUND'." Anyway, i got a kick out of it thinking that if there was no wall and an army showed up they'd say, "Crap that's a big gate, lets go home". It was beautiful and I knew right away that we were at a true tourist spot because two different people asked me to take their photo for them. One even explained to me how to use her disposable camera, much appreciated for sure!

After the giant gate experience we went to the first of two towers. You know the ones, the traditional Japan towers. The ones that you've seen silhouetted on everything about Japan that you've ever seen or read. Yeah, those ones. There was a lot interesting going on around the first one, tons of little shops, tourists, and general interesting people. Too bad I was with the whole crew so I couldn't just sit down and wait for the right person in the right place to make the right photo.My list of places in Japan that I want to go alone or with only one other person that also enjoyed taking photos, is growing large. Oh well, the crew is super fun, so it was alright. It's kinda sad that this is the last day that we shot with them. Just when we were all getting to know eachother and figure out how things worked together, it's over. Cheers to the crew!

After tower one we went to the second tower. I know your thinking Lord of the Rings....but don't! This tower I guess is a "world treasure".....at least that's David's loose translation. Either way, it's pretty special. It was rebuilt for the 5th time over 400 years ago. It's pretty darn massive so I imagine that they used to get pretty mad when someone would show up and destroy it, requiring a rebuild. Too bad they didn't build it up near that massive gate from earlier! There were two large buildings in the same complex as the tower that housed MASSIVE budda statue kinda things. Each building had a gigantic one in the middle and then a bunch of more normal sized big statues around of it other odd 4-6 armed critters, flowers, and other strand demon lookin things. "No photograph" sign.....AGAIN! I wanted to take photos just to rebel against such nonsense! I guess they're cultural treasures or something like that....not sure why that means they can't be photographed!

So, that was pretty much my day, pretty much fun in Kyoto for sure! Alright, well, it is nearly 10 and we have another over 2 hours of driving till we get to Tokyo. I imagine that we'll stay there tonight since Kamogawa is another 2 hours by train from there and they won't be trains running when we get there. Thanks for readin the blog again!

oh yeah...

I finished my last blog and thought that I should post a photo of myself...so you don't forget what I look like....

rockabilly, sumo and rain

Wow, I wanted to write this blog so badly last night but this here blog thingy would not let me! So, I will try and renew my passion for the stories that I wanted to tell last night tonight in Kyoto. After spending Sunday-Tuesday in Tokyo I stayed in Kamogawa last night and then left at 7am for Tokyo again where we met with the producer and drove 5 or so hours to Kyoto where we are shooting tomorrow. It's pretty exciting because we are shooting at an over 400 year old temple, it's beautiful!

Okay, so Sunday! We went to Tokyo where we met up with David's sister and some of her friends and we went to a Jamaica festival in the rain. It was actually really fun desptie the rain. The are of Tokyo that it is in is nameless (at least in my mind since I forgot the name of it), but it is so amazing! On our way to the festival we crossed the famous bridge where people get all dressed up and just hang out. Sadly we were in a hurry so I really did not get any decent photos....but I'll be back there for sure! I was disappointed that we had to leave so quickly but on our way we discovered the Tokyo Rockabilly club! I was shocked! It was a whole group of guys dressed in their best rockabilly clothing dancing in a circle to extremely loud oldies music! They were actually pretty good.....going back there too! I HOPE!

Then we finally made it to the Jamaica festival where we enjoyed some amazing tunes such as "I shot the SheLiff", and "Stand up for your Lights". The band was actually rather good. The rest of the fesitval was just random stands selling way over priced shirts and food. So we left and met some of Kai's other friends for dinner which was also very fun. That evening we stayed with Jessie from Scotland. I haven't met a whole lot of Scottish people but she's the best one ever! What a lovely human she is. She has a tiny studio apartment in Tokyo where she let the 4 of us stay...along with her so 5 all together. We had such a good time joking around, laughing about pretty much everything, expecially "Jobbies". If you don't know what that means.....well I'm not gonna tell ya, ask someone from England.

The next day instead of going back with David I stayed with kai and we cruized around Tokyo until Diane (mom) arrived and we went around visiting some of their old friends. What a priviledge it is to be able to visit Japanese homes here. They are all such wonderful people an unique living situations. The last home that we visited we stayed at for the evening. My mind is blank on names tonight but the family was quite a treat. After dinner we sat around while the dad played guitar and Kai sang and we just had a general good time. It was so nice to be around another Japanese family with 4 kids, ages 10-23. I enjoy seeing how family "situations" in other countries work, ya know!

Oh yeah, and I saw a sumo wrestler on the train Tuesday! He was soooooo big! The photo is not great nor does it really portray his true size, but I'm putting here anyway cause I have to! Tribute to my first real sumo experience!

Anyway, I'm running out of steam for this here blog....so I'm in Kyoto! Talk to you all later!

more than a month

While I am in Japan I am doing what is called an Independant Study through my school, which means I am getting credit for one class while being here. For the class I send my teacher a number of photos every week along with a journal. This is a direct copy and paste from my thoughts expressed to him in my 'journal' for the week. They seemed to work as a blog for the evening:

After being here over a month, sadly, I'm almost getting used to it. It has been quite a challenge to keep fresh eyes and a fresh perspective on everything. I honestly did not expect myself to get used to being here so quickly, I thought that everything would feel new and unique the entire time. I should have known better. Don't get me wrong, I still find joy in the pictures drawn on signs and can't help but crack a smile at the little old lady/man with decades of life etched into the wrinkles of their face. I just keep trying to challenge myself to find more...maybe I just need to think slightly simpler. I dunno really...but I look forward to finding out this week which it is.

It was actually last week that I had this realization as I was writing on my blog about Japan and I posted a photo of a lady sitting next to the road waiting for her ride home after work. When I took her photo and we exchanged smiles and laughs, did she ever think that within hours of that moment people all over the globe would, if desired, have access to see her face on my blog? Photography is, as you say, truly a priviledge and people must have a certain level of trust to allow their photo to be made. Especially in a country where communication is limited to body language it is so important to be able to portray trust to someone in the 10-15 seconds of interaction while making a photo of them.

I know this is getting long, but I wanted thank you for your advice on editing through piles of photos. It is indeed so hard to be honest with myself as to why I like the photo. Honestly, I am not sure that have fully learned to do it well. What is even harder for me when I'm looking through photos is to forget what others 'would/will' think. When I see an image that I like, the thought always goes through my head of wondering if someone else would like it too, or do I just like it because I made it and I think it's neat? I'd like to say that all that matters is if I like it but other's opinions do matter at some point down the line, sometimes sooner than later.

I guess these would be the questions that I usually ask myself when editing; they seem pretty shallow after actually writing out what goes through my head:

1. Do I like this image? (usually a judgment made rather quickly)
2. Do I like it because of the emotions that go along with it? or is it actually good?
3. Usually at this point I question myself as to whether or not it's a photo that I'm looking forward to showing someone else. I guess this is because what I love so much about photography is the opportunity to share it.

Okay, so that's the end of the 'copy/paste'. I guess i'll just attach a photo and go to bed; Kaduaki and Masako, koto players that are in the video.

lost in Japan adventure!

David's cousin Amelia is here visiting and she and I decided yesterday to take the train into Chiba City and get some stuff done. John dropped us off at the train station at 11:15 and helped us buy our first tickets. It's nearly and hour and a half train ride and we made it to Chiba. We were so stoked to arrive and be in the right place and everything! So, we decided to go eat some lunch! The first place we tried was closed....we wante to go there because their menu had a lot of pictures! Oh well, so we chose another place that had food displayed in the window and looked cheap. We were pretty surprised when we were seated at a table with other people...turns out it's the kinda place with big tables instead of small tables and everyone just sits together. Pretty fun! Although, not a whole lot of pictures of the menu, so when the waitress came Amelia just pointed at someone elses food and gestured "two" with her hands.....it worked! We both got a nice bowl of "Raw-men" noodles and it was cheap too! Anyway, we left there and wandered around the city for a few hours. I bought a new external harddrive (which was the main purpose of the trip, aside from adventure) and we also found starbucks, where we got some coffee, YAY! The rest of our time there was filled with laughing at hilarious English on t-shirts and perusing a 6 story mall with VEEERY expensive cothing, weird furniture, and a ¥100 store where we spent ever more time after discovering that everything was $1.

Well, then it looked like it was going to start raining to so we decided to head back to the station. Surprisingly we were not overly lost and found it with ease. Getting correct tickets to go home, on the other hand, was not so succesful. We found and information booth with a lady that spoke English and she pretty much just took up time that we needed to get the the train we thought was leaving at 5:30; no help at all! Oh well, we just went to the machine and bought the tickets that sounded pretty good and headed for the train. Upon arriving where we thought we should be, the train we thought we would see was not there, but instead a local train that said it was going to the correct destination. Riding the local train is alright, it just takes another half and hour longer and we had payed for express tickets. We remembered that we needed a local train to get to Soga before transfering to the express, so we jumped on the local train and got off at Soga. But, when we got there and showed our tickets to someone in charge they said we needed to change our tickets. So, they changed them for us and gave us ¥400 back...score! Well, the express train came and we got on...but upon arriving at Kuratsua Yamoitaria (or something like that, I have no idea) everyone got off the train and we had to also. BUT!! As we got off and looked across the tracks there was a local train that said "Kamogawa", where we needed to go! So, we just jumped on there and figured that it'd get us there eventually, so whatever!

After getting on the train we started looking at this map to see if it looked right and we had pretty much convinced ourselves that it was and then we started recognizing people; we were in the exact same car on the same train that we had started out on when we left Chiba the first time.All we did was get off at Soga, take an express to this other station (after a bit of a wait) and get back on the same train again! We were laughing soooo hard! anyway, we made it home in exactly 2 hours with such a fun story to tell!

So, that was my day and my first experience with traveling on the trains without someone that speaks Japanese. And wow, everything is soooo much harder when you can't even try and pronounce stuff that you see written because it's not in Roman letters!

on set in Japan

Well, I'm blogging, at this point the planned blog in my head is boring and would most likely bore you to death. So, I'm going to attempt to spice it up and conjure up some good stories...of stuff that actually happened, don't worry! Just stuff that's not currently in my head to blog about, you get the picture! It's of David looking at the monitor while the "actors" do a scene for the music video of "Kamogawa". That was Saturday, "Day 1" of the shoot. You probably recognize the set from the last blog about the Japanese ranch.....yeah, same place. The crew that came to work on the video thought that it was the most amazing place.

The crew was so fun! There were...lets see...1,2,3,4,5,6,7....there were 7 of them. All of them fairly experienced in the film world, so David had a great time learning some stuff from them, as well as directing them. Even though they were all more experienced than he is, they were so quick to do whatever he wanted even if they knew a better way to do it. Pretty awesome. Me, I just wandered around taking photos of anything and everything they did.....over 1000 of them in two days. Here is another one of them. This is Natsuko (Nachan as a nickname); she's been written about in this blog before, but she's the main actress in the film. She's never acted before and she's doing an amazing job! oh Yeah, the crew....we had a great time trying to communicate through body language and their few english words and my even fewer Japanese words. But we managed to laugh a lot and I even learned some new stuff! Like "hena nijongene"; which is a great response to "Baka Gaijin"....because it means 'You're a weird japanese person'. As a point of clarification a japanese person would NEVER EVER call a foreigner stupid; only if you're good friends and they are joking around. This culture is waaaay too polite for that.

Anway, it was a great weekend, lots of fun, lots of locations (I think there were like 5 around the city) and lots of photos.....like 1000. Seriously...over a thousand actually. OH yeah, a funny story! So, Saturday night we went out to a fried fish place....the fish was AMAZING!!!!!! We were sitting there at our table and this drunk girl came in (probably around 25) and stops at our table, saluted us and said, (in very loud terrible english) "goooood morning". David and his cousin Amelia and I just started laughing soooo hard! It was the most hilarious thing ever. She said a few other things throughout the night that were pretty funny, but I won't go into them. Alright.....it's Monday.....another week in Japan to come!

yes...really in Japan

This sign may seem normal at first until further inspection reveals that yes...that is an arrow pointing to the "Rice Terrace". Do we have those in the sates!?! Haha. So this is at the home of Minoru Murayama, a friend of David's family. I think he must have watched too many John Wayne movies as a child and now he's finally living out his dream of having a ranch with horses. It's pretty amazing actually driving past rice field after rice field and then ending up at this gorgeous house with horses, chickens, ducks, dogs, cats, and rabbits. He's got american license plates nailed all over his fences. He admits to stealing them off cars in the states with no shame at all, "I'm Japanese, nobody said anything to me"...haha, he's so funny. His english is good enough to carry on a decent conversation with minimal confusion. I wandered around his barn searching for "Japan", but literally could not find it...it was quite American for sure! Anyway, we spent a bit of the afternoon there taking photos and talkin to him about shooting a scene of one of the music videos there. Oh, another funny thing about his place is that it is so pretty and unique the Japanese people come there and just walk into his yard and start taking photos with the horses. He said that they even go as far as to spread out a blanket and start eating on his front yard!

When we got home I went for a walk around the neighborhood with David's cousin Amelia that just arrived here yesterday for a week.It was getting towards the end of the sunlight and we ran across the sweetest little old woman named Matsumoto San (Mrs. Matsumoto) sitting on the side of the road waiting for a ride apparently. An old man showed up in his truck...and they just wanted to chat for a while...which was super fun since there was no language cohesiveness happening between us. Oh well, they were great and to recognize this woman and I'll show her beauty to the world (or at least to you). I just had a strange realization...I wonder if at any point in her mind today as I was taking photos of her did she wonder who would see the photo? Did she have any clue that it would be posted on the internet where anyone in the world..if desired...could see her face? I wonder if anyone has ever posted a photo of me somewhere...Yay for midnight musings!