Going through some old photos and feeling very nostalgic, and do I dare say, homesick for Japan. Hopefully once the seas calm a bit we should be feeling better about life here, but I guess the grass is always greener.

Haven't decided on a sofa yet, but until then we still have our two precious rocking chairs.

A funky little cafe on the edge of Chinatown serving up fresh baked goods and tasty espresso drinks. And if you get a chance try the sourdough.

My photo taking habits have become a lot like my reading habits -- a few exposures on this camera, a few on that one, taking longer than usual to finish any particular roll, if at all.

Another one of my father, aunt and uncle from around 1950. Any guesses as to what kind of car that is?

No big surprise here, but John Wayne made number 8 on the all-time top voices in the movies list. A voice I recognized well before I ever knew who John Wayne was, thanks in part to Full Metal Jacket.

Backing up data from my office computer(s) I came across a few old black and white scans my sister sent me after our father's funeral. I defiantly need to get a print of this one .

I've always disliked how my photos load in the browser, too choppy and it bugs me when the text gets shifted down the page. Looks darn unprofessional. Flash is cool, but a little out of my reach. The alternative, javascript. I'm getting ready to change servers (and hosts) so I'm having to go through and reinstall all the applications I use here, one being an updated version of Noel Jackson's slick PhotoStack. The current version (2.1b7 at the time of this writing) uses a script that gives a cool flash-like fade-in of your photos that I was able edit and use in MT. More info from the code author here.

(note to people reading via RSS reader, I can't get this to work in the feed so you need to open the post in a browser to see the magic.)

The above photo care of Philip Dyer (John Sypal and myself) was taken at the end of our photo shoot/trek from Kitasenju to Nippori on Wednesday. My film's sitting on the bookshelf, and will be getting on that real soon. John and Guy (1 and 2) have theirs up, with more to come.

And on another note, it almost killed me but this site finally validates (for now). Valid XHTML 1.0 transitional baby!

I dug out my Canon Snappy 50 this week, a camera that used to belong to my mother, and gave it to Frankie. I wish I could have captured the look on her face when I loaded it with film and explained to Fran that it was now her camera. She shot a roll and a half in the apartment Monday evening and finished the second roll at the park on Tuesday. She hasn't gotten the hang of the view finder just yet, opting to press her forehead against the top of the camera and fire away shot after shot in every direction.

I was planing on getting her a toy camera (not a holga or diana, an an actual toy) but what better way to put to use a camera that captured half my childhood, and I've already ran it over with my car (long story) so it'll handle any abuse a two year old might throw its way.

A section of sign outside a small Izakaiya near my office which seems to have a cult film theme to it. One day I'll bring a real camera and get the entire sign.

Under the proper conditions, enough light, a steady hand, and a bit of creativity my mobile phone can produce some nice photos.

This is not one of them. Just me lunch.

I'm not an antisocial person by any means, though when I'm invited out to larger gatherings in the city I tend to shy away. My mind goes through all the possible scenarios; I drink too much and feel lousy the next day, I miss the train and have to pay 20,000 yen in cab fare to get home, I don't recognize any faces and everyone feels unapproachable and so forth. My new secret weapon is the camera. Now every-time I hear about a party I think of it as an excellent photography opportunity, where, for the most part, people don't mind getting their photo taken up close and most rather enjoy it.

Phone-cams get little respect, as do compact 35mm and digital cameras. Polaroids are fun but none of these seem to garnish respect like my Nikon SLR with Speedlite flash. And I love being able to move around the room and jump into conversations if the opportunity presents itself, or shoot a few frames and move along.

Here are a few more photos from Saturday I scanned late last night, and yes I'm still learning how to use the flash.

A chocolate sculpture of the Mona Lisa from Tokyo's Salon du Chocolat. They had a few other pieces on display including a miniature five-story pagoda and a women's dress, all made out of chocolate.

We spent a brisk Saturday afternoon at Enoshima watching hawks circle and dive bomb people eating lunch on the beach steps. We were very careful, making sure not expose any food to the sky and still one of the huge birds swooped down going for what I guess was Frankie's milk box. No crowds, no vendors, and no speakers blasting Coca-cola jingles repeated ad nauseam. The Shibuya crowd can have Enoshima for their few weeks in the summer, and we'll take it the rest of the year. Just wish they'd leave it a bit cleaner.

What better way to spend a beautiful sunny day than at an indoor aquarium. Well I guess we could have gone bowling...

Frankie was really able to appreciate the aquarium exhibits this time. She bounced on my knee and clapped through the entire dolphin show, though I could have done without the whole "look, it thinks it's people!" aspect of the show. It may not be the most authentic wildlife experience for her, but until she can take the Zodiac ride out whale watching in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, this will have to do.

We spent this evening unpacking from our holiday in Victoria. The thing is, we arrived in Tokyo three days ago, so I guess Air Canada decided our luggage would have wanted to spend a few more days in Vancouver. That was real nice of them. My New Year's resolution: When traveling, pack everything in carry-on bags.

For those traveling back to Tokyo with small children on a ten plus hour flight, I totally recommend booking a hotel at Narita and making the last leg of your journey on a good nights sleep and buffet breakfast.

Some non-denominational holiday imagery from my family unit to yours. Photos from Masako's sexy new Contax U4R, and more to come.

The two of us decorated our pygmy douglas fir last night. The other, well she was content in taking it down at about half the rate we were putting it up, and tossing baubles into the kitchen. Charlie Brown would have been proud.

You simply haven't lived until you've been Christmas shopping with a 18 month old who just learned how to run, and wants to grab everything in sight. You simply have not lived.

The above relics were leftovers (overlooked in the rush *wink*) from when our new employer moved the IT operations department to a different floor of our building. When I first started working at this office almost three years ago, we spent the better part of a month hauling this god awful equipment around during floor layout changes. Oh the horrible memories of figuring out what goes where, and what connects to what, and what the hell is this.

I've been pining for a wide angle lens ever since our photo developing workshop, when I swapped my 50mm with Jim's 20mm. Having been accustom to 50mm, the 20mm opened the frame up so much I could almost see the back of my head. Yesterday I finally gave in and shelled out for a used manual focus Nikkor AiS 28mm f/2.8, which should be here in 1-2 days. Besides, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to own an SLR and only one lens, well at least that's what I've been telling myself.

Saturday morning with Fran -- the absolute best part of my week. And of course, the extra hour sleep doesn't hurt either.

And now for no apparent reason a photo of my powerbook with prized Girl Skateboards stenciled sticker. From the flickr mac stickers group.

The above images are the product of yesterday's late night kitchen developing session. This was the first time to get my hands wet with chemicals and despite the fact that I forgot to get a thermometer, bent the film badly on the reel and was pretty drunk, I think they came out nicely. I tried to stick with the Ilford product line (HP5 Plus 400 ASA, LC29 Developer and HYPAM Fixer) but had to bow to the fuji gods and buy their driwel wetting agent.

I sent my FM3A to Nikon to have the film advance and multiple-exposure lever fixed and luckily for me Nikon Japan doesn't know what a grey market warranty is. Now I only have my lomo, yashica, canon and sony digital camera to shoot with.

I'll be showing a small exhibit of photographs at the next sundown session in Shimokitazaka Sept. 19. If you're in the area drop by and check out the musical acts performing. I'll make a separate post on this later on.

For the past few months I've been using a new film scanner, the Nikon CoolScan V ED and the improvements have been phenomenal. The b/w scans I get and the upgrade to digital ice was well worth the price. Now I just have to sell the Minolta Dual Scan III.

I recently contributed a photo to File, an online photography magazine. Other current contributors include a few favourites of mine Jose Luis Martinez, Justin Ouellette, Neal Curley and Eliot Shepard. They're also building on a nice collection of galleries, one in particular that caught my eye was "Three Polaroids from Crete" by Jim Green.

For them that is. I'm my usualy darling self. My sister came across this photograph of us while visiting her good friend (also in photo) in Toronto, who looked after me quite a bit during my years living there. Many days spent taking me to swimming lessons and dressing me up as a girl then sending me to the store for Archie comics. And to answer that burning question, Yes. I did get a free bowl of soup with my haircut, as was the style at the time.

world peace now 3.20 @ hibiya park. starts at 1pm

to find march 20 events in your area check united for peace

a great collage of images from last year's internatonal day of action can be seen in a system of a down's music video for "boom" in which they teamed up with director michael moore.

finally getting around to scanning some more of the b/w i shot last christmas in canada. enjoi.

yet another from the batch of expired kodachrome with slight colour correction in photoshop, actually just "auto level". side note- hamdy's wife hiroko gave birth to their daugher laifa a month before frankie was born at the same hospital.

"and so... it really comes down to a very basic choice that we have to make as a civilization: either: we will learn to bury the animosities of our ethnocentric, militant traditions and come to understand that earth's survival depends on our collective, unified participation... or we will sustain this cycle of violence and revenge until humanity is returned to the status of primitivity and, earth reduced to the rubble of antiquity. it's really up to us... it really is... up to us."

-ending quote from short video channel surfing the apocalypse

thought we could use a little colour around here. the above is a selection from my first processed batch of 16 year old expired kodachrome. this is the original developed colour, it hasn't been photoshopped.

somehow i expected more, something a little wilder, not so uniform. i wanted to see all these "warped, faded, exaggerated colours" even though that's not what i read about and was not what others told me might happen. i choose to ignore that advice and hoped for something new and creative, yet maybe found it in a different way.

"within less than ten years a handful of global companies will own directly or through license the actual genes that make up the evolution of our species."

this is not science ficton but a chilling quote taken from a new documentary now playing in canadian theaters. "the corporation" is from canadian film makers mark achbar, joel bakan and jennifer abbott. mark achbar also directed the film manufacturing consent: noam chomsky and the media, which was the most successful canadian feature documentary ever made. i got this from noam chomsky's book understanding power published in 2002 but I think another film produced by now defunct canadian production house salter street films may have topped it, michael moore's bowling for columbine.

synopsis: THE CORPORATION engages us in a darkly amusing account of the institution’s birth as a legal “person” whose prime directive is to produce ever-increasing profit for it’s shareholders regardless of the cost to anyone, or anything else. this pathological nature wasn’t always written in stone. 150 years ago a corporation was merely an organized way of doing business. today it is a global power. view trailer

kerry vs. the chicken hawks, but what's a chicken hawk you say?

chickenhawk n. a person enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it; particularly when that enthusiasm is undimmed by personal experience with war; most emphatically when that lack of experience came in spite of ample opportunity in that person’s youth.

high profile warmongering chickenhawks would include:
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Newt Gingrich and so on. check the chickenhawk database for a complete listing.

recruit the chickenhawks today!

food for thought
arms spending has accounted for $1 trillion a year world-wide since the end of the cold war. this alone could provide $1,000 a year for every family on the planet.

just 25% of the cost of george w bush's star wars program would provide clean drinking water for the billion people who are currently without it.

source: uk socialist party

i've always had a thing for empty pools, especially abandon forgotten ones. it probably started when i first saw empire of the sun in which the young character jim makes his way back to his parents mansion to find all there belongings taken and an empty pool in the yard collecting leaves and dirty rain water.

this particular pool in the photo seems to be long forgotten on the roof top of my office. plastic molded deck chairs faded to a pale yellow and powder blue, you could put your ear to the concrete and almost hear the slapping of wet feet as they circled the pool long ago.

maybe it's just envy that i grew up without a pool, as did most everyone else in my hometown. no, we weren't poor, just six months of harsh winter doesn't leave much time for outdoor swimming unless you plan on using it for a skating rink for most of the year.

thinking i had something original here in taking photos of empty pools i did an internet search of other photographers that might have published the same type of material and i came across a book by an artist i've already mentioned on vudeja back in october. viggo mortensen's book titled "hole in the sun" described as "a series that documents and abstracts the urban backyard swimming pool as monument"

a few weeks back masako was walking through the station square with frankie on her back when she was aproched by a stranger. she introduced herself as a recruiter for children's modeling agency and wanted frankie to come in for an audition because as she put it "had a face like a doll". masako refused the offer politely and told the head-hunter that we were not interested. she told masako to "talk it over with your husband", they swapped numbers and she gave masako her card and said to expect a call from her office in a few days.

masako and i have discussed this before and both of us are strongly against selling frankie's image to any corporation whether it be for diapers, disney or a tobacco company. i don't believe child modeling is any different in canada but what makes it even worse in japan is way children are "classified" according to race, or is that nationality? well what ever it is they wouldn't list my daughter as either "japanese" nor "international" but "half". half? wtf is that!? half what? calling someone half in canada would result in a can of whoop ass being opened, but here it's thrown around like some sick badge of honour. if we are going to "classify" our children by fractions then let's get it right and do it across the board. children with 100% japanese blood will now be called 1 or whole or we could use the decimal system for a technically correct 01.0 (too bad there is no such thing as a 100% pure race but shhhhh... don't tell anyone) but wait, are we "grouping" by nationality here or by race? oh who cares! many people here seem to think they are one in the same anyway! so kids of 3 different backgrounds will be 1/3rds and so on. how about this, i propose that instead of taking away part of their identify when adding a nationality or race that we add a number like instead of half we would say double. yeah that sounds better! or an even better solution would be to STOP classifying and segregating our children period!

excerpt from "culture jam" by kalle lasn, founder of adbusters magazine

"half of all exotic dancers were once beauty-pageant contestants. that's a surprising statistic when you first hear it. it's hard to bridge the distance between the wholesome, naive, small town cavalcade queen who plays "the volga boatman" on the accordion and wants to be a vet, to the hardened stripper with seen-it-all-eyes grinding in red light on the stage of number five orange."

so sorry mom, you won't see frankie in any sears catalog, diaper ad or switch long distance telephone carrier commercials, at least while i still have a pulse.

lately i've been trying to build confidence by take more photos of people on the street. i've found outside the train station a great place to do this with the abundance of amateur and professional musicians, skateboarders and even old school break dancers all usually willing to have their photo taken.

most exciting for me is the skateboard photography, so if you know where i can find groups of skaters in and around sagamiono or machida sta. willing to be photographed please let me know. thanks.

broadcast me a joyful noise unto the times, lord,
count your blessings.
the papers wouldn't lie!
i sigh. not one more

it's been a bad day.
please don't take a picture
its been a bad day.
please

bad day r.e.m.

i've been watching mtv and editing these photos at the same time and came to these conclusions

-gwen stefani is hot, hot, hot. this is not news for me, i've always thought this even though i fear she may glow in the dark with all the make-up sometimes. and did no doubt trade in their guitar, bass and drum kit for a synthesizer and drum machine?

-outkast has style coming out his every orifice. i like this line from the hey ya chorus "shake it, shake it like a polaroid picture"

-good charlotte... when i first saw one of their cd's at hmv i took a listen thinking it was good riddance, so safe to say was very disapointed.

i was there.

"all he wants to do is be creative." "he doesn't care about money or personal hygiene or anything else. and he never has. if we made $10,000, he'd give it to the pizza delivery guy. he only cares about art." michael balzary, a.k.a. flea on guitar god john frusciante.

for christmas masako got me the red hot chili peppers greatest hits album and i've been listening to it non-stop ever since. it also came with a dvd including all their videos since blood sugar sex magik and higher ground from mother's milk. i was suprised the video for the newly released track fortune faded (which is also on the cd) was not on the dvd, but can be seen online.

photos from victoria, fm3a and dirty cheap film

back in tokyo enjoying the rest of the new years holiday. frankie is really missing the fresh air, parks and family back in victoria. lots more photos to come from our trip once I get them back from the lab and get a hold of a scanner.

tomorrow evening masako, frankie and i are catching a plane to victoria to spend christmas with gramma and grandpa. and by complete coincidence my good friend for close to 5 years in japan will be on the same flight to vancouver with us. see ya at narita dave!

some more photos from the nikon fm3a. i really should by a scanner now that 90 percent of my photos are now either from my lomo, yashica or nikon. any scanner recommendations? preferably one that can scan 35mm negatives and slides.

it's been almost 5 months since i've made a post dedicated to frankie and it's well overdue. all photos taken with my new nikon fm3a on cheap 100 yen rolls of film from costco.

Why was michael jackson spotted at k-mart? The sickest part of this joke it that not much has changed since i first heard it 10 years ago. i could not have said it better. oh yeah, because he heard little boys pants were half off.

Sign the petition now to Revise the current animal protection laws in Japan

all is well here and frankie is getting cuter by the day. getting cooler out now and enjoying nightly hot baths, it's like returning to the womb every night.

i have been spending some time away from vudeja lately posting photos to my fotolog and my lomohome.

looks like i have an entry just for me on one of tokyo's best photoblogs. less talk and more rawk.

You know how the last song that you hear on the radio in the morning is with you all day no matter how bloody irritating. Well, I don't listen to the radio, and if you ask why, then you obviously have never listened to Japanese radio. Because I don't listen to the radio or watch TV in the morning before work my brain has to work extra special hard to dig up some annoying tune or tv commercial jingle. Today it's the Seinfield theme, even though I haven't watched that