Thankfully there’s no more long business trips for 2016, just Christmas with the family. But next year promises to be just as grinding with trips up to Kansas during the winter, as well as next year’s business support trip north of Tokyo near Sendai.

I managed to catch a few multi-hour naps from while flying out of Tokyo. When I woke up, it was about an hour out of Minneapolis. Outside it looked cold and remote, covered in snow. Almost like an alien landscape.

Photos were taken with the iPhone 7 Plus, and post processed using VSCO’s various filters; Distortia Pack for the top, and B4 for the bottom. This post was written using WordPress’ latest iOS app on an iPad Pro 9.8″. Getting the photos to the point where they were visible to the WordPress app required a number of non-intuitive steps, but otherwise the WordPress app makes writing a quite post like this reasonable.

Another two-week-plus trip to Japan and YS-71 has come to an end. I leave in the morning on a 20-plus hour flight back to my home in Orlando. While here I’ve had to put up with sinus problems and blisters on my right foot the entire time. Couple that with the dark-to-dark work schedule for the every day I was here and I’ve had no time to do much more than eat, sleep, and work. No time at all for much of anything except for today, because the exercise ended yesterday. I had a Major with the JSDF come by for a few hours to visit. We did a little bit of sightseeing in the downtown area and we had lunch. I’d met him last year when I installed software for one of the Japanese Army’s training schools. We hit it off and he’s become a true “pen-pal.” I look forward to seeing him when I come to support these exercises.

One of the places we visited today was Jojuen Garden. I did take more than just the cat, but that cat came up to ask for rubs and say hello in his own cattish way. The day may have been cloudy, but the little guy brought a bit of personal sunshine into my life at that moment. Made me think of the Gingersnaps back home. Quite the handsome little guy if I do say so myself.

I haven’t written much because I’ve been busy, and I’m still in a state of shock over the election of Trump as president. I’m gathering my wits about me as it were, and coming up with a long-term plan to counteract what his election has wrought. I’ll have more to write about in the future, but for now, I need to finish packing and get ready for tomorrow’s flight home. I can’t wait to get home.

Andy, over at blog.atmtx.com, has redesigned his blog, and in the process gone down a different path with sharing his photography. One of his entries, “Deep Blacks: Checking Status“, reminded me of a similar set of photos I took in Japan while riding a train to Sapporo Japan in 2013. I’ve had my own work buried for so long that I actually appreciate it again. All of these were taken with the original Olympus OM-D E-M5 and the M.Zuiko 12-50mm zoom, a lens that the photographic paperback intellectuals tends to look down on for no good reason.

This photo fits in with Andy’s observation that the use of cell phones on trains is carefully controlled. This gaijin was standing in the section between cars in order to place his smart phone call so as not to disturb the other passengers, who were sitting quietly.

This was taken at the Tama Zoological Park, just outside the main building of the Insectarium. I thought these two were interesting the moment I saw them. But they also triggered the memory of a short science fiction story I’d read decades ago, about a lone man, a lone woman, and their lives together in the aftermath of a nuclear war in New York City. The story started about the man finding the woman, and progressed about the two of them slowly growing closer. As their story was being told, there was the back story of odd happenings in the city. The story ends when one day, after hearing strange noises coming from Central Park, the two find that the Alice in Wonderland statues have been re-carved into insect forms. It’s at this point the two realize their end may be a lot closer than they realize.

I don’t remember the story’s name nor the author, only that I read it sometime back in the 1970s. It had come as part of an anthology from the Science Fiction Bookclub. Or at least I think it did. I may be mis-remembering all of this.

Once the Yama Sakura portion of the trip ended I traveled by train back towards Tokyo and Tachikawa, one of the suburban areas of Tokyo. On a Sunday, my birthday, I took the Tama Monorail to the Tama Zoological Park and spent about three hours just roaming and looking at the few animals that were in the park. The day was cold and cloudy, not the best time of year to go and see the park. But I went because I felt it was better than staying in the hotel, or walking around the train station and its stores.

I went to all the major sections of the park, and found all of them interesting. But of all the animals I saw I like the bigger animals the best.

To me the most thrilling thing to see were the running young giraffes in the African section of the park. Tama is very big, and it appears they’re trying to give the animals as much natural space as possible. While I was there I noticed hey were working on a large section, which I can only assume will expand the park space even more.

These are, in no particular order, three photos out of hundreds I took while in Osaka. I didn’t have a lot of personal time to explore until the very last day. So I wondered about in a random fashion close to the hotel I was staying at, grabbing images that had a certain appeal to me, such as this businessman coming down these red stairs. It was the composition and colors, and the one lone human in the frame.

This photo shows the bare sinews that bind a city together: power and communications. You need power in a modern city before anything happens, starting with communications, and continuing on to light, heat, the movement of water and other human activities. Even when it’s exposed like it is in every Japanese city I’ve visited so far, it’s totally ignored, just part of the background. Yet, if it didn’t exist, neither would this city, or any modern city for that matter. Even cities that go back centuries, to far earlier historical eras, now have these sinews.

And then there are this odd little corners with human-designed and crafted artifacts that catch the eye and the imagination. I thought about moving the cigarette receptacle out of the image, but left it in because smoking is such a part of Japanese culture. The other four are meant to hold cuttings or living plants. Four support life, one supports the human activity that leads to an early grave.

Tonight’s my last night in Osaka. I wish I could have spent more time getting to know the area, but hey, it’s a job, not a vacation. Still, you make the most of the moments you have. Tonight’s walk around was pleasant enough.

While out looking for that McDonald’s, but before we found it, we temporarily gave up and decided to get a pasta meal at a local establishment named Mano-e-Mano Pizzeria and Bar. Now you figure that you’d find pasta and pizza in a place with that kind of name, but when we got there we discovered it was past their lunch time and the only thing they were serving was what they referred to as pizza. So we ordered one to share. Only when it arrived it was made with Neutella (yes, that Neutella) and came with vanilla ice cream to eat with it. Well, we ate it. And it was filled with Neutella. After that we re-doubled our efforts to Find. That. McDonald’s. Oh, and we had Italian soda to go with our Neutella pizza.

The exercise I flew to Osaka to support ended yesterday. So today, Friday, was a day to do catchup work in the hotel room and to walk about the city around the hotel. One of the tasks that my traveling partner and I wanted to do was to find a McDonald’s and get a Japanese-version of an American Big Mac. It was an irrational desire, what with all the other restaurants in the area, but bad habits die hard (as I probably will due to bad dietary decisions such as this one). After all the long hours, we really wanted a Big Mac.

So we started by querying our super sophisticated map applications on our super sophisticated smart phones (me with my iPhone 6s+, and he with his mere iPhone 6) because unlike other Japanese cities I’ve visited, there weren’t any obviously located that we could see anywhere we walked. Guess what? Me with Google Maps and him with Apple Maps could barely find a McDonald’s within the area. We did manage to find one close to our hotel. So we turned our trust over to GPS to guide us to that lone McDonald’s. As it turned out GPS and other tracking technologies on both were truly lacking, and it was as much guessing where the smartphones were trying to guide us as having true guidance from either device. We finally found that McDonald’s after a lot of walking, partly underground, and we placed our order.

I would up with a Teriyaki McBurger, my concession to being in Japan, while he got the Big Mac. I’m not exactly sure if mine qualified as a true teriyaki burger or not, but it was sure slathered in teriyaki sauce. What I can say with absolute certainty is that the fries were definitely McDonald’s fries, just like I’d get back anywhere in Orlando.

At least I wasn’t looking for Subway…

From before the sun rises until after the sun goes down, or fourteen hours, I’m at my job here in Japan. Because I get back to the hotel so late regular restaurants are closed, both convention franchise as well as local mom-and-pop businesses. So my Plan B for getting something for supper is to walk about two blocks to a 24-hour combined grocery and little restaurant called foodium. I don’t know if it’s a Japanese language idiom or not; the name sounds like something that would come straight out of the Valley. The foodium has become my one way of breaking the monotonous cycle of sleep-shower-breakfast-work-sleep. And it gives me an opportunity to walk about a bit as well, even if it is at night.

The interior is well lit and very modern, just about what you’d expect in an American supermarket. The panoramic should give some idea of one corner of the store. It’s packed full of modern packaged Japanese food items, a lot of it highly processed.

Some of the items have a western Christmas/Yuletide theme. The Japanese, for whatever reasons, are very much into Christmas. You can’t go anywhere without hearing western Christmas music being piped into stores and train stations.

The Japanese will even dress the part during Christmas, as the photo above illustrates. Japan is an interesting culture, one that combines aspects of theirs and ours in interesting and complex ways.

Cameras

The top photo was taken with an OM-D E-M10 and Panasonic 14mm pancake lens. The rest were taken with the iPhone 6s+. The camera in the iPhone is truly powerful with capabilities I’ve barely learned to tap. The ability to take panoramic photos, like the second, is so simple to do and the results are actually worth keeping. I wish Olympus were as easy to use making panoramics as the iPhone.

The E-M10 JPEG images were moved onto the iPad using OI.Share. All post processing was done on either the iPhone or the iPad using Snapseed.

It’s been a long trip so far, working 14 hour days since I arrived. And it won’t end for another two, and possibly three, days. By that time the event I’m supporting will have come to an end and I’ll be packed and headed to Tokyo for the last part of this trip. By that time I’ll have a weekend to myself, back where I stayed in April of this year. That’s not bad, but it means I’ll have missed the opportunity to see Osaka and Kyoto. The photo above was taken of a red Japanese maple while I was out on a walk, and the photo below is outside my hotel window at night.

The best I can do are these few photos, taken with the iPhone 6S+. I do have some extra on the Olympus E-M10, but I don’t have the time to pull them off and work with them. Maybe when I get home I can have some time to myself to look them over. Using the iPhone is so much faster, especially when time is so limited. The iPhone camera is superb, and has so many interesting features I’ve yet to fully learn, let alone even try.

Engrish

I try not to make fun of any culture, but sometimes when I see the English titles of Japanese products I have to stop and document some of them. Thus these two photos. The can of Sanity is such a political goldmine during our crazy season. I wish I could ship a case of this to Donald Trump, but I don’t think it’s enough.

Tonight’s meal was with my traveling companion, an Osaka-style pancake made with ham, shrimp and squid called okonomiyaki. It was delicious. Far, far, far better than lunch. The restaurant wanted to know if we wanted a version with tomato sauce, but we both turned that down. The version served to us was fine as it was.

My traveling companion with the Implements of Eating Okonomiyaki; a little stainless steel shovel, chopsticks and a paper bib for sloppy eaters (I kept mine spotless). The okonomiyaki was placed in the center of the table which is heated, and the shovel is used to cut up and place portions onto the eating plate. Simple enough for even a Big Scary Gaijin (BSG) like me to do.

Lunch in Osaka. Purchased across the street from the hotel in Japan’s equivalent of a 7/11. It was egg salad sandwiches and Japan’s equivalent of diet Pepsi. I have no idea where or why the English on the sandwich package. The Pepsi “Strong Zero” is a bit of a surprise as well. I’m assuming “Strong Zero” is a marketing attempt to distinguish diet Pepsi from all others in Japan. I think I should create a new brand of coffee for Japan, and call it Java Weak Hashmap (programmer’s inside joke here). It would fit in quite well with Suntory’s Boss Coffee.

After a long, slow shower to both clean and sooth, I was sufficiently awake and aware to go outside and tentatively walk around the hotel. Right across from the front entrance is a broad pedestrian bridge where I grabbed a snap looking under the overpass from this morning’s view out of the hotel window. Looking around Osaka reminds me, more than any Japanese city I’ve visited so far, of many science-fiction Japanese anime settings; tall buildings close in together, multi-level roadway system, and waterways underneath it all.

As I walked around I paid more and more attention to the autos that roam the streets. I noticed quite a few Nissan and Toyota vehicles which seemed to make up the majority. I also began to tune my seeing to Honda.

In every case I could spot, none of the Hondas I saw today looked at all like the Hondas being sold or driven in the US. The closest I came across was the vehicle at the top, which looks like a stretched version of the 2015 Hybrid Fit. The differences with this version in Japan and the American version is the wrap-around rear window and the entire front end treatment. The Japanese version still has the distinctive side sculpting. The two smaller vehicles in the Orix Car Share parking spaces appear to be Fit Shuttle hybrids, but again,  is very different from Fits sold in America. I should end this observation by saying I find all of them more attractive than any of the American versions, and wish they were being sold in America. I would have seriously considered them over the Toyota Prius.

I end my casual walk about with a photo of these sheep sculptures near the hotel I’m staying at. No idea what they stand for. The closest I can come to is that 2015 is the Year of the Sheep in Japan.

Camera

The Olympus E-M10 came out in force today, coupled with the 14-42mm EZ pancake zoom. I could have used a considerably sharper and far more expensive 12-40mm lens, but then it would have stood out like a sore thumb. The results from this zoom are more than good enough for my needs. Along with the E-M10 I also have the iPad Air 2, which is again proving its worthiness as a photo viewing and processing machine. The nearly 10 inch screen size provides considerable ease over the iPhone’s nearly 5 inch screen size for this use case. I will use the iPhone over the iPad only when I’m in a situation where I only have the iPhone. Processing-wise the iPhone can perform as well as the iPad, but I much prefer the larger screen size of the iPad for this kind of work.

And speaking of the iPhone as a camera, I much prefer the conventional shape and easier handling of the Olympus over the iPhone as well as the E-M10’s much larger sensor. While I marvel at the iPhone’s picture quality, it’s in comparison to the Olympus. The Olympus is still superior in my not-so-humble opinion when you can use it. The reason I reach for the iPhone is because when I’m traveling I have the E-M10 tucked away in my back-pack and the iPhone is literally in my pocket, ready to be used. The iPhone’s ease-of-use is clearly superior over any camera in that particular use-case, but if I have a chance to pull out the E-M10 to use it, I will because the E-M10 trumps the iPhone just about everywhere else for my uses. Or to put it this way, in the past when I had the Samsung Galaxy S4 and my regular camera was packed away, if I came across a photo opportunity, I’d let it go by rather than try to use the S4 to capture it. The iPhone is the best smartphone camera you can own and use, bar none.

You use what you have under the conditions you have it and adapt accordingly. I’m fortunate to have both with me.

Still, the view outside the hotel window can be interesting and a reminder that Osaka’s environment is different from Orlando’s and Chicago’s, even Tokyo’s further east. The view is looking south across a tributary of the Yodo River (I keep wanting to type Yoda), and the Hanshin Expressway Route 1 Loop if you want to look on Google maps (I had to).

I decided to do this in part to imitate John Scalzi, successful science fiction author and general raconteur, who while on The End of All Things book tour in August of this year photographed outside his bedroom window every morning because he was traveling between cities and book signings just about every day of the tour. The other part? Well, I have taken outside photos in the past, but just never called them out. I never knew they could be so… interesting.

Once again the Apple iPhone 6s+ backside camera is called upon to take the snap. This time the iPhone’s embedded camera software made the decision to use built-in HDR to pick up detail and compress the visual information so that it could be seen on an electronic Retina display. And it is appreciated, let me tell you. When I can take a photo with one iDevice and see it essentially the same across my iPad Air 2 and my Retina MBP, then I consider that a powerful statement about the use of Apple technology for creative purposes.

This screen capture of Google Maps shows the essential route from Tokyo to Osaka. I had to take two trains, the Narita Express from Narita to Shinagawa, and the Shinkasen Hikara from Shinagawa to Shin-Osaka, or Osaka. I would have gotten to the hotel about 45 minutes earlier than I did, but the Narita Express was so quiet and I was so tired I slept through the Shinagawa stop. I had to take a train back two stops, and there the very nice train personnel helped me to change my ticket to a slightly later train.

After two years of travel to Japan I’m still impressed by the quality of the Japanese rail system, now even more so after having ridden on the Shinkansen. Compared to flying on a contemporary Boeing 737 jet with a domestic US carrier, the interiors are spacious and comfortable with plenty of leg room, allowing me to lean back and nap. Both the Narita and the Shinkansen are smooth and quiet. One thing I did notice and that’s the apparent speed. While you’ll read the occasional story about high speed runs, the speeds through the heavily urbanized corridor I traveled were more “sedate.” But that’s not a problem when someone else is doing all the driving while you just sit back and relax.

Camera

I’m doing something very different for me. Now that I’ve got an iPhone 6s Plus I’m using the back-side camera rather than pulling out my Olympus E-M10. And I’m very pleased with the results I’m getting. I fully understand now why so many prefer smartphone photography, especially on the iPhone. If I were forced to I’d leave all my interchangeable lens cameras at home and just use the iPhone. As it is I only have the E-M10 and a few, very compact lenses.

I’m also using a WiFi hotspot rental I picked up at Narita. For about $10.50/day I have 4G LTE connectivity with unlimited data. My iPhone and MBP are wirelessly linked to it. This gives me the connectivity I need for a lot less money than if I were using AT&T in Japan. AT&T on travel is just too damned expensive.

Both taken with the E-M10 and 45mm, both tinkered with a bit in Pixelmator on an iPad Air 2.

I had a nice French lunch at Le Café La Boutique in the heart of downtown Tokyo. I got to sit for a while, resting my knees, while watching people eat inside and out of the cafe. I saw faces and heard voices from around the world. It was a quiet yet magic moment to realize all that had transpired to allow me to be in that particular spot at that particular fortunate moment, crossing paths with all these other strangers. Friendly to be sure, but people I’d never seen before, and for the most part never will again.

I then spent ¥1,600 to see Impressionistic paintings on loan to the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum from the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Worth every yen. It was crowded, but not overcrowded. I believe the Japanese take art quite seriously and support it by paying to view it in places like the gallery. Besides, I haven’t seen this much Impressionistic painting since I was studying art in the 1970s and went to the Atlanta High Museum.

As I was slowly walking through the exibit it dawned on me that there is nothing more antithetical to today’s photography than the Impressionist period. Moving through the gallery and viewing the paintings produced by Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, and so many others, reminded me of how timeless art can be produced when you mix genius with paint on canvas (or wood, or whatever else you had at hand). Today we spend way too much time on the trivialities of digital photography (primarily through measurebation). Way, way too much time and energy. Way too little on the art and emotion of the image.

Walked around the huge buildings close to the train station feeling rather small and insignificant. Noticed that Mitsubishi is on a lot of things in this area, including the Bank of Tokyo. I also discovered you can’t loose site of the train station in this area. Go inside a building and there are signs leading you underground back to the train station. It’s big enough on the outside, but it’s like it has roots that spread out to everything under the ground.

Did find another Bic Camera. It was the largest I’ve seen so far, with two sub-basement floors. Finally found a decent camera section. But I still felt cold moving through all the gear. I felt odd in there anyway, what with me having an E-M5 and an E-M10 hanging off my body, one with the 17mm and the other with the 45mm. That, and two spare batteries is what I took with me to Tokyo (and what I carry on my train trips). It was a quick in-and-out. Bic Cameras are too crowded, bright, and noisy for my taste.

All in all, including travel time, I spent about six hours going to and slowly meandering about the little section of Tokyo. Tokyo is way too big to take in in just one day. It would take weeks, if not part of a lifetime, to get to know the city and really see it. And that’s just one city in one country on this planet. My little trip today was like dipping my little toe into the ocean, and calling that swimming.

Today was supposed to be a day of light adventure, a dry run to learn how to navigate the Japan Railway subway system to the point I could get around without getting totally lost. It would have been more elaborate but I’m still trying to finish out my right ear infection, so I was still tired and took another morning nap for about an hour, ruining my big plans to actually leave Tachikawa right after breakfast.

As it turned out I didn’t leave for my big adventure until around noonish. I went to the Tachikawa train station and paid my 470円 for a one way pass to Shinjuku. I managed to find the right platform and board the right train. The only problem is I wasn’t paying close enough attention to when they announced the Shinjuku stop. When I finally noticed I’d already ridden right past it. I finally got off at the Tokyo station, and started to look for a way back to my original destination. That’s when I found these folks on the platform, waiting to head to Shinjuku themselves.

They were a very nice vacationing couple from New Zealand going to see their son, who’s currently living and working in Shinjuku. Between the three of us and a very helpful Japanese lady who understood Shinjuku and who figured out we all three needed help getting there, we got on the right train and got off at Shinjuku station. After leaving the station we said goodbye and good luck to one another, then headed on our separate ways. As it turned out I exited the station right in front of Yodobashi Camera.

Funny thing is, I was supposed to go visit Map Camera, an all-camera camera store. But I couldn’t find it (to be honest I wasn’t looking all that hard), and I was taken in by Yodobashi and the memories I had of it some two years ago in Sapporo. But as it turned out, this Yodobashi was something of a let down. Out of eight floors in that store, the cameras were tucked into a corner of the first floor.Yodobashi now sells just about everything there is to sell in consumer goods, not just consumer electronics. There was more space given over to selling Apple and Apple geegaws than there was to all the camera brands they had stuck over to the side.

Sure enough the Apple Watch was on sale, and in spite of what the photo indicates, there was a large crowd hanging around to look at this new product from Apple. Whether that translated into sales or not I have no idea. But it sure was crowded (this one photo was taken with me sticking my camera over the crowd just to get this shot). I don’t know about the rest of the world, or even the rest of Japan, but I have a feeling the Apple Watch may just yet turn into a raging sales success. Only time will tell.

Once I got out of Yodobashi I just wandered around, sort of soaking up the ambiance around the train station. I have to say it’s the largest train station I think I’ve ever been in, even larger than the one in Sapporo, or at least rivaling it in sheer size.

The next-to-last photo is, to me, the Japanese equivalent of a speed trap. I’ve spent years documenting speed traps in Orange County Florida, so my spider sense is well honed when I get near one. And my spider sense went off when I saw the four of them just standing and waiting for something to happen. You know, like in a speed trap.

And the last photo is a Prius, the Japanese version of the Prius C, except in a color I’ve never seen in the US and nicely tricked out. That all-black grill treatment looks really sharp against the neon orange (trust me it was orange, but the art filter I was using at the time pushed it into yellow. Whatever. It looks sharp, and I almost want my next Prius to look like this one).

The most valuable item I picked up on this trip is a printed map of the JR lines, but with all the stations printed in English. Using that map I was able to quickly find the right line and my trip back to Tachikawa was completely uneventful. But I still payed close attention to make sure I got out at my proper station.

Next weekend I intend to head into Tokyo proper on Saturday, then go to Mt. Fuji on Sunday. Maybe I’ll even head back to Shinjuku when I get off work sometime this week. Yes, I feel that comfortable.