monday afternoon

So I can hardly get myself to do anything here Im so excited to get to Montreal on friday. Ah...10 days is going to go so fast though. a Beam of sun is striking me right in the face. wish I didnt have to teach in 20 minutes. would like to laze around and take a few photos. These photos below are from Andrew's housewarming party on saturday. Its weird that he lives in Skye and Stephens old house. I love the one of nami yoko and the robots.

nami, yoko and the robots  

nami in the fridge  

chi chan, andrew and hirohito  

andrew on the keyboard  

school days

so I've started this series of portraits of all the teachers at one of my schools. I spend so much of my time at work, probably more time than Ive spent anywhere else in Japan - well I guess other than in my bed... anyway its weird taking photos of people you've seen so much over two years, but sometimes have barely even talked to. I never realized the things I noticed subconsciously until I started taking photos. Now I realize that so many expressions or poses that people chose for the photos are really typical. I look at them and think ' he ALWAYS sits like that!' at least about the people who are in my office. Some of the others I literally dont know their names still ! ( embarrassing, but since this is my second school I have never been to a party with them so there is no way I could know them unless I toured around chatting which I am too shy to do) I love the one of the agriculture teacher holding the flowers ! he looks so adorable. Im exhibiting the series at the school festival in October - the 16th and 17th. I hope they all turn out well. I am rather nervous taking them because I dont know many of them, and its hard to get them to be comfortable because I dont feel my japanese is good enough for that.
But its really interesting. I wish I could go around taking portraits of people everywhere and making little books with them in it. I guess I could do it - but I will have to wait till I get home. Too difficult with the language thing. Utterly daunting actually. Luckily at school I have captive subjects....

kimiko  

rei laughing  

music students  

the office  

ogawa sensei laughing  

hiraide sensei blinking  

ni nenseis  

miyajima sensei  

miwa sensei  

empty classroom  

another agriculture teacher  

in the greenhouse  

home economics teacher  

hiraide sensei with toys

chicken outside the physics teachers office  

akane sensei laughing  

agriculture teacher and student  

webcam self portrait 5  

webcam self portrait 4  

webcam self portrait 3  

webcam self portrait 2  

webcam self portrait 1

my front door  

earthquakes

whoa this is the second earthquake of the night! happening right now! maybe Im weird, but I kind of like it. it feels so surreal. plus its not really that big - so its not scary but everything is shaking. Malani just called and told me to turn off my gas line. good thinking -that wouldnt have occurred to me at all! thanks Malani. Apparently Mt. Asama is going to erupt - at least according to the news. how exciting! luckily its not too near here though.... oh yeah - these photos are the first ones i took with my new Nikon D70 - Im very pleased with it - though i have to download the english manual. Its amazing being able to change iso from photo to photo -and of course to be able to edit as you go. On the other hand I have a bit of a problem with that ontologically -it changes my relationship with what Im photographing. in a way I dont like being able to delete , because its erasing something from the world exists, even if it only exists for a brief moment. abortion for photography. If you never brought it into existence in the first place, its one thing, but once you have, it feels a little bit wrong to then hurl it back into nothingness. But it is certainly going to be cheaper. It all comes down to money sometimes. sad. I think I should aim to minimize the amount of deleting. I dont want to be taking twice as many photos just to make sure I get a good one. I want to get the good one from the get go. Get it got it good. though actually I havent used it very much so far. It was a monsoon rain today and i wasnt in the mood to venture out.
ok really. must sleep.

malani and tomomi - yes that shadow is the lens hood! I figured it out after!  

with my new camera - asuka at malanis house  

the orange shrine these are not with my new camera - analog in my new favorite style - 1600 in the day - from my summer series ' the grainy summer' which you can see in entirety and better resolution at my photo website

green lights in matsumoto  

sea  

blue doors on sado  

sunday night again

well, I wanted to write something in here on friday night, after I got home from my first tea ceremony class, and I wanted to write something saturday night after I finally bought the Nikon D70, but something was fucked up with the sign in on blogger, and of course its not until i should be going to sleep, have a first period class tomorrow, that this thing starts working again! well, I shall have to write my thoughts about those two previously mentioned events sometime this week - for the moment I will just post a few photos and go to sleep!

suwa at night