Category: Japan

Visit gallery

Arguably, Osaka castle is the next best thing in this city after takoyaki. Just as this great food, the castle is also a heritage from the era of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He was one of the three great unifiers of the warring state era (sengoku jidai), two other being Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Although they were contemporaries, these three leaders were strikingly different in personality. Yoshikawa Eiji wrote the following variation of a popular verse about them in the preface to the epic book about Hideyoshi (Taiko):

What if the bird will not sing?

Nobunaga answers, “Kill it!”
Hideyoshi answers, “Make it want to sing.”
Ieyasu answers, “Wait.”

Photography notes

Amazingly, Osaka castle dominates the skyline of the city even these days, at the age of skyscrapers. The panoramic views from the main tower are breathtaking and are straightforward to photograph. Wide lenses are useful for capturing golden architectural details of the building in the foreground.

The main tower houses an excellent museum of the warring era, where photography is allowed, but light levels are low. Typical considerations for photographing in museums apply there.

We only had less than a day to explore the castle, as we were staying in Kyoto. Hopefully next year, I will have an opportunity to explore the city some more. If you have tips on things to photograph in Osaka and/or related techniques, please leave a comment.

Visit gallery: Nara

Nara, the ancient (8th century) capital of Japan, is famous for its temples and pagodas. The main building in the Todaiji temple complex houses a colossal bronze Buddha statue (Nara Daibutsu) is said to be the largest wooden building in the World.

Photography notes

Inside the temples, flash photography and tripods are prohibited. Consequently, one needs fast lenses. Wide-angle lenses are especially useful for three reasons: first, for a given aperture, a wide-angle lens would give a greater depth of field, compared to a telephoto lens; second, short focal length allows for slower shutter speeds, which is helpful in the low-light conditions; third, the interior layouts of the temples often call for a wide angle composition, as there is often no opportunity to step back away from the subjects (statues and people).

Besides architecture, another interesting subject is a large population of deer that live in the streets of Nara. The dear are, technically, wild, but they definitely substantially rely on the tourist traffic in the city. Street vendors sell special biscuits (shika senbei) that can be fed to the deer. The deer quickly approach people with the treats. They actually learned to bow their heads when begging for food.

Travel notes

We spent a day in Nara with our friends, one of whom lives relatively nearby in Osaka and often travels to Nara to enjoy the leisurely pace of this ancient city.

In Todaiji, the monks offer the tourists to predict their fortune. For a small fee, one can draw a narrow wooden dowel out of a prismatic box that has holes on one end, like a giant salt shaker. The dowel contains a number that is matched to aprinted piece of paper that describes your fortune. Fortunes range from “extremely bad” through “moderately bad”, “neutral”, “moderately good” to “extremely good”. High resolution of the fortune scale definitely feels satisfying. The papers are then tied to the strings outside of the temple, so that the good fortunes come true. Overall, this fortune-telling ritual feels very appropriate for the settings in which it is conducted (dim lights in the grand temple, giant statues of gods, etc.) despite the irony of the fact that it is done by the monks who generally preach “being here and now”.

We actually had a chance to test our fortune prediction on the very same day by experiencing a variation of the story about a proverbial camera left on the train in Japan by a foreign tourist, only to be safely recovered hours later. In our case, Svetlana, who drew a “moderately bad fortune” in Todaiji, forgot her watch in the restaurant where we had lunch. She returned to the restaurant two hours later with a friend (who drew a “very good fortune”), and the owner was very glad to return the watch to the rightful owner. Apparently, he even ran after us when he found the watch, but could not find us in the maze of the narrow streets of Nara. Thus, one could argue, the good and the bad fortunes of the two people in our group cancelled each other (the rest of us drew largely neutral fortune predictions).

After the day of walking and taking pictures, our friends suggested that we go to Osaka for dinner, because “there is no good food in Nara”. After a short train ride, we arrived at Osaka station – a massive complex of shops and restaurants. Takoyaki! Osaka has been famous for this food since the times of Toyotomi Hideyoshi – sufficient time to perfect the recipies.

Visit gallery: Kyoto

During the Edo period, Nijo castle (Nijo jo) served as Kyoto residence of Tokugawa shoguns. The Ninomary Palace (Ninomaru Goten) consists of five connected buildings located on the same level. This architectural layout can be considered as a single-level analogy of a traditional five-story pagoda. The buildings are intentionally misaligned, so that one always has to change direction when moving from one room to the next. This feature made the palace more defensible in case of attack. For example, the misaligned rooms would not be in the pass of flying arrows shot through doorways.

The interior corridor that runs along the main building has a specially-designed wooden floor. The planks are suspended on hinges that squeak when someone steps on them. This is a security feature, designed to alert the castle guards against an attack. The chirping sound made when a person is walking along corridor is similar to a song of a nightingale or Japanese Bush Warbler (uguisu). The wooden planks of the floor are called uguisu-bari (nightingale floors).

My first thoughts when learning about the uguisu-bari were that this squeaking floor could easily be a construction imperfection, which is being passed as a design feature with a poetic name. After all, naturally-occurring imperfections are often praised in Japanese art, as they bring elements of nature into man-made objects. Examples of these “random” features in art are jagged edges of a calligrapher’s brushstrokes, intricate crack patterns on the surface of a glazed ceramics, intermittent wavering sounds of a shakuhachi, wavy patterns of tempered steel at the edge of a samurai sword, etc. However, just as in the examples above, the apparently random features of an art objects are, in fact, carefully controlled by the artist. In the case of uguisu-bari, the architects of Nijo-jo designed the hinges that produced the chirping nightingale song by employing pieces of wood that rubbed against each other under pressure. Indeed, the detailed drawings of the squeaking hinges are part of the castle exhibit.

Photography notes:

Photography is prohibited inside the castle building, but it is allowed in the beautiful and expansive gardens and the castle grounds. The trees and even the grass are meticulously manicured by hand. The gardeners pruning the grass by hand under the punishing August sun are examples of dedication to one’s profession that is evident in so many aspects of Japanese culture.

Visit gallery: Otaru

Subjects for protography

• Old buildings with unique architectural details: wooden shutters, coloured glass windows, tiled roofs, etc.
• Inreriors of shops and restaurants. A local policeman (koban), noticing our long lenses, tripod, and photo backpacks, took us through a narrow back street to a restaurant with a unique ceiling made of huge curved wooden beams. He also asked the owners to allow us to photograph the interior.
• Glass blowing demonstrations.
• The canal. It must be nice to stroll along the pcturesque canal, but unfortunately, our time in Otaru was limited, and heavy rain cut our walk short.

If the weather forces you indoors, consider a cafe on the main street that sells castard cream puffs (“shyu-cream“) and coffee.

Visit gallery: Asahiyama Zoo

 
Asahiyama Doubutsu-en is located in Asahikawa, Hokkaido.

Despite the large crowds (more than 2 million people visit each year), the unique layout of the zoo facilities provides many opportunities for photographing animals up lcose. In many cases, close access to the animals means that they are separated flow the visitors by glass. However, in case of penguins, polar bears, etc, there are areas from which they can be photographed without any barrier (glass or bars) in front of the lens. Also, people enjoying the animals make interesting subjects themselves.

For hours, directions and admission prices visit the official website.