A Moat

Shizuoka City, early May 2021. This moat once surrounded a castle, but now goes around some schools and a park.

Inky Jellyfish

3 jellyfish drawn in oil based marker or colored construction paper.

Gardener’s Gonna Garden

I may not be allowed to plant anything in my borrowed room but I can still buy and have flowers, even if it means keeping them in PET bottles on the windowsill.

Carp

Yaizu, Shizuoka, Japan.

A few minutes away from the station, there is a small river filled with enormous carp. On my day off, I spent some time watching them swim around and eat cherry blossom petals from the surface of the water.

Waves

Little White Flowers

Pink on Blue

Meijo Park, Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture

Since the weather was so nice last weekend, I decided to go for a walk around Meijo Park. I went expecting to see more cherry blossoms, as according to the forecast — and yes, it’s a thing — they were supposed to be in bloom.

An Update

Howdy y’all. It’s been a hot minute since my last post. The truth is that I’ve been taking some time to work through a few things in my personal life, which is why I haven’t been updating so much lately.

Not sure when I’ll return to my old update routine, but I am hoping to be a bit more present here in the future.

Fishy Fish

Koi at Tokugawa Garden.

Retro Photography

Here in Japan, there is something called a Lucky Bag, which is sold around New Year’s. The draw of such bags is two fold. First there is the perceived value of getting a bag full of items worth more than the retail price. Second is the mystery aspect of what will be in the (often sealed) bag– although in recent years stores have been becoming much more transparent.

This year, I droped $50 on an instant Polaroid-type camera set. The set came with a camera (in either pink or yellow), a carry case, and a packet of film. I purchased a few extra packets on the side.

It’s nostalgic for me since I remember a time before even disposable or one-time-use cameras. Looking through the tiny viewfinder, which has a little circle to denote where to aim, brings back memories of borrowing my mom’s camera in middle school and walking into the woods with my uncles to take not-so-great photos.

The set included the rainbow border film, but I couldn’t resist the monochrome and classic white either.

After dinner, I figured I would try experimenting with said camera. I choose one of the plants in my indoor garden, to mixed results. On one hand, it doesn’t exactly match what I saw in the view finder and the plant is blurry as all get out. But on the other, the textured window came out real nice. I’m thinking pictures taken in well lit areas should be better and plan to hold the camera steady for a few seconds after shooting to see if that improves image quality. If nothing else, it should prove an interesting experiment.