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-