Japan: The Preview Slide Show

Click the picture for a preview of my awesome trip to Japan! Above, the chef at Savoy, the best pizza yet!

Thanks for watching the slide show! Above, those leaves from a gingko tree are so beautiful they almost look fake. I can assure you they’re not. I took that picture in a park near Beth’s Uncle Mike’s house.

Now I’ll explain a few things. The slide show is comprised of about 130 images that show a sample of my entire 2-week trip to Japan. Coming soon, lots more blog posts! I have so many favorites to share! I also will be producing slide shows for each of the families I worked with while I was in Tokyo. More on that later.

But first, my preview: I chose music from the movie “My Neighbor Totoro” because that movie is very special to me and my family. It was the first movie Bradley watched all the way through when he was 3 years old. Mike, Bradley and I watched it and cried together, then watched it again. We loved it that much!

Then Bradley, being a typical 3-year-old, watched it literally hundreds of times. He since became a Hayao Miyazaki fan, collecting all of the movies from Miyazaki’s Ghibli Studio. I longed to see Japan, because I simply loved those movies that much!

Note to blog readers who might want to see the movie now that I’ve talked about how much I love it. Disney bought the rights to the English version a few years ago, redubbed it with Dakota Fanning as the main voice, and reedited it. The Fanning version — BLAH! YUCK! MAJOR thumbs down horrible. I do not recommend the Disney version. The English language version to watch, if you’re lucky enough to find one, features Lisa Michaelson as the main voice. I have the Michaelson version on DVD so if you live in Metuchen and would like to borrow mine, I’d be happy to loan it to you.

People keep asking me how it was that I got the opportunity to go to Japan. Above, that’s Beth and Rich’s family on the right. I love that picture. I call Beth and Rich my “host family.” Rich called me last year saying that he wanted to give his wife a special Christmas gift — me! Is that the coolest thing ever or what? I had done a few photo shoots with them in Jersey before they moved to Tokyo and Rich thought it would be awesome to bring me to Japan to document their life there. While I was staying with Beth and Rich, I worked with several other families documenting their lives too. Be sure to check the blog for those sessions coming soon.

In the shot above, I was standing on the other side of the pond in Arisugawa Park wishing the people in the center of the bridge would move so that I could get a shot of my host family there. But once I got home and saw the picture I realized the golden opportunity of an unportrait that documents my host family’s stay in Japan. I love it!

This is inside Uncle Mike’s house. I love his house! More about my trip to Uncle Mike’s house in a future blog post. For those of you who are Facebook friends, and were following my written journal, Mike is Beth’s uncle. He’s the amazing fellow who invited me to his house for his famous chocolate cheesecake. Yum!

Uncle Mike’s famous cheesecake. Ahhhhhh. I like to take pictures and blur the background like this on purpose. It gives the images a dream-like quality, which is really the basis for memory anyway. We want to remember specific things about our families and our journeys. In the one above, I specifically shot images inside Uncle Mike’s house for that dream-like effect. I heard a rumor that he’ll be moving back to the states soon after having lived in this traditional Japanese house for 30-something years.

This is one of the first pictures I took in Japan. Beth sent me to Arisugawa Park and left me there all by myself. The first thing I thought to do was to call my mom and say, “Guess where I am!” Then I realized it was about 2 in the morning, her time, and figured I better just wander around and take pictures. Look carefully at the one above. It encompasses so much about Japan in one picture: cherry blossoms — I was so lucky they were still blossoming when I arrived — and a memorial statue in the background of a prince. I don’t know the story about the prince, but I do know the park is named after him, Prince Arisugawa. I like the juxtaposition of old and new in the image.

I took the image above on a subway. It wasn’t very crowded because it was a Sunday. What I especially like about the image is the kanji letters outside the subway’s window. I have no idea what it says though.

This is outside the Sumo restaurant in Tokyo. The restaurant is owned by a famous Sumo wrestler. It’s where the wrestlers go to “bulk up.” If you squint, you can see Rich in the picture. He should eat there more often!

This is “the girl.” More about her later. She’s in Nikko on a terribly rainy day. Great day for pictures, but not so great for walking around centuries-old temples. I love that picture! If you’ve seen the Totoro movie, or if you’ve lived in Japan, you’ll understand why rain is such a great thing for a slide show about Japan.

If you saw this one in the slide show, you might have wondered what it was. We were on the train going back to Tokyo from Nikko. This is the rain-streaked train window. Very artsy, huh? I love it! Cropped out of the picture are the girl’s socks drying on the window sill.

This is one of my favorite images from the entire trip. So much going on in this image. Tell me, what do you see?

This is another of my favorites. Beth and I went to Kamakura to see the Zen temples there. This monk was so sweet to let me photograph him.

The new growth on the trees was simply stunning. I think I was in Japan at the perfect time of year.

This restaurant was inspiration for a scene in “Kill Bill.” There’s a rumor that George Bush got sick here. I ate there twice on my trip, and the food was delicious both times.

Waiting for the school bus. The bus from their neighborhood takes about an hour to get to their school, which is still in Tokyo. Tokyo is a very big city!

He was standing outside Shibuya Station. Can’t help wondering if he’s a model. (I did not use that line on him, I swear. I didn’t say anything to him at all.)

If you saw this in the slide show, here’s some background…

…I was trying to get a picture showing the motion of the subway by blurring whatever was zooming by outside the window. I thought I was pretty lucky to be sitting across from a couple in kimono. It’s kind of unusual to see a man in kimono anyway I think.

There’s a different picture of this dog in the slide show. Isn’t he cute? In the slide show picture, the guy who is with him is wearing a coordinating outfit.

Back at my host family’s home, the kids and I have fun with my off-camera flash.

There are crows everywhere in Japan. This one is stationed outside the Imperial Palace.

The food in Tokyo was excellent! In this restaurant, Beth’s kids cooked our dinner right at our table. Yum!

This cracked me up! Rich sent a text message to his friend, John, another of my photo clients. John took me to Vermont last December, where we had an awesome meal at American Flatbread Pizza. Now Rich and John are competing with each other on which pizza is the best, Vermont or Tokyo. I did not, however, characterize the Vermont pizza as “crapizza.” Rich, you’re going to get me in trouble! Even so, sorry John, the pizza at Savoy in Tokyo was the best! You should try it some day!

This shot needs a little explanation. I was at Uncle Mike’s house documenting his home when all of a sudden this cat showed up walking along some sort of structure outside the window. I think it’s a storage shed or something that is about as high as the frosted top of the window. Great timing, huh? I love that shot!

This is “the boy.” He’s at the bike park. More about that awesome place in a future blog post.

Behind the boy: green tea ice cream. They don’t have diet coke in Japan, but they do have green tea everything. Green tea McSwirlies at McDonald’s, but no diet coke. That was the only thing about my trip that wasn’t perfect. (First thing I asked for on the plane — can you guess?)

Remember Tokyoman? He’ll pop up in many of my future blog posts. Grex loves Legos, so he made Tokyoman for me to take pictures of him at all the various places I went. That was great because I carried Tokyoman around with me every where I went, so I thought about Grex all the time! Above, Tokyoman (pronounced “TOKE-yo-mahn”) is visiting the Kamakura Daibutsu (literally “Kamakura Big Buddha”). Roughly 50 feet tall, this buddha really is giant. I figured that Buddha is photographed a LOT by tourists, probably hundreds of times every day. I wanted to take a picture of it that nobody else had. I love it!

When I saw this sign outside the Forever 21 store in Harajuku, I knew it had to be the last image in my preview slide show. Beth and Rich love Japan. I am so grateful to them for giving me the opportunity to visit there.

This picture shows a little better how the sign fits into the storefront. The store was having its grand opening the following week. People on the street seemed so excited about the new store! More on Tokyo fashion in a future blog post. I have SO much to share with you!

Click here for more pictures and more discussion about the preview slide show images. More tomorrow as well!

I’m so happy to finally be presenting the images! Yay!