Amami Superman Photography

I think we got a late start for the rainy season here in Amami. It's usually over by now but we've had pouring rain for the past couple weeks. Yesterday it finally gave up and I took the family out.

We decided to go to Ayamaru Misaki just north of there airport. I was expecting it to be kind of crowded but, to my surprise, it wasn't. I took some sunrise photos earlier this year from this spot.

The first thing we noticed when we drove into the parking lot were these 5 mini bikes.

Except for the green one, these bikes are customized Honda Gorillas and Honda Monkeys. All of which have 50cc engines. Gorillas have a squarer gas tank while Monkeys have a round one like the red bike has in the front. I don't know the other differences between the two bikes, but I believe their parts are interchangeable.





As we were walking out to the edge of the reef, I came across a girl running toward me screaming my name. When she got closer I realized she was a student of mine. Although most Japanese have straight hair, China has naturally curly hair and is very cute in pigtails.



There aren't many shells to find out here on the reef beds. You can find a lot of mussels that people like to gather to take home to cook up for a meal. I'm not too fond of mussels or shell fish, but it all depends on how they're cooked.



Although there were a lot of clouds this day, there was a lot of blue sky also. I tried to take these photos with the sky as the subject but they just didn't seem to work for me. I was kind of annoyed with myself because I forgot my polarized filter at home.









The name of this drink is Deka Melon Cream Soda. "Deka", or "dekai", means "big" or "huge". The drink is 500ml (about 16 or 17 ounces), hence the "Big Melon".

I was looking for something to drink but most of what this particular vending machine had seemed like generic brands.


This particular beverage caught my attention and I had to try it. It wasn't that great. I did a search in Wikipedia for this drink and came across a page for it. I thought the part about the 500ml bottles was a bit funny.

I remember the other types of shady cola they had back home, like Jolt. This next drink's name kind of reminded me of that, "Hard Spark Cola". This drink falls in the I'll-never-drink-that-again category.

Today was a special day at my daughter's school. All the 2nd graders' parents were invited to go and eat lunch with their kids. My wife and I both went. Last year we weren't able to go for work reasons so we asked Jade's grandmother, Kaoru, to go. This was my first time and I was kind of excited.

At first they had all the parents gather in one big room to explain what rooms we were supposed to separate into. They then asked 20 of us to help bring the food from the kitchen. The menu for today was dry curry, naan, vegetable soup, milk and pumpkin pudding. I was one of the people who volunteered to go pick up the food from the kitchen and this is how they bring it to the individual rooms.

I remember in school they wheeled in lunch carts that kept the food warm. Those were the lunch lady days. It reminds me of the song by Adam Sandler, Lunch Lady Land. This lunch line was just a bit shabby, though. I've never been in the service or prison, but would it be something like this? LOL, I don't know.



One of the cool things I like about the schools in Japan is they make the students do most of the work. From serving lunch to cleaning, they have the students take turns doing the work. I don't even think they have janitors at my daughter's school.



I remember they gave us the choice between regular milk or chocolate in elementary school. I don't remember if it was everyday, but I remember they had chocolate milk and sometimes cinnamon squares if we were lucky.



All the 6th graders are on a field trip to Kagoshima so we got to use their rooms on the 3rd floor to eat in. Jade's classroom was on the second floor so I went downstairs to see her. It wasn't until afterward that I noticed her shirt collar all messed up.






"Itadakemasu" directly translates to "I humbly partake." If you say, "It's a dirty mouse." fast enough, it sounds like you're saying "itadakemasu".

The man sitting next to Jade is Hikari's cousin, Chikara. The lady and boy on the other side of the table is Chikara's wife and son, Etsuko and Naoki. Naoki was born three days before Jade and my wife and Etsuko shared the same room when they were in the hospital together. Jade was actually 10 days late and Naoki was a few days early if I remember correctly.



Here it is. I've heard of dry curry plenty of times, but I'm not exactly sure what it is. Is it curry that isn't as soupy as regular curry?



The food and utensils really made it feel like a prison meal. I've never had one, but if I had to imagine one, this is what I would imagine.





Jade is nutorious for taking her time eating lunch. No matter how much we get after her, it still takes her forever. I really don't think it's because she doesn't like the food, she just eats slow.





When you finish your food and leave the table you say "gochisousama deshita". I'm not exactly sure how to directly translate it to English, but a nuance of it would be "Thanks for all the delicious food."

After that, Jade had to go back to her classroom so we helped clean up a little then headed home. Today reminded me a bunch of when I went to elementary school. What I wouldn't give for some macaroni & cheese with little smokies in it. Mmmmmm smokies...

The local newspaper here on the island held a photo contest last month. I was a bit nervous when I submitted my 5 photos to them. I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to get anything.

There was only a 1st and 2nd place with the rest being honorable mentions. 1st place received a trophy and 20,ooo yen (about $200), and 2nd place received a trophy and 10,000 yen.

It was on the 31st of last month that I woke up around 6:00 in the morning to check my e-mail and what not. I yawned and then started to sneeze a bunch. I probably sneezed around 5 or 6 times. It was the last sneeze that I sneezed so hard, I broke a rib on my lower left side. It hurt so bad. At first I thought I was having a severe cramp in my side so I stood up to try and stretch it out, but I could barely get my arm over my head to do it. I stood there for about 2 minutes, but the pain just wasn't going away. I sat back down in my chair to finish the e-mail I was on and had a hard time doing even that. I bit my lip and did my best when all of a sudden, I sneezed again. That was when I realized this was no cramped muscle. I was in so much pain I thought I may have to call an ambulance. I immediately went back to my bed and laid down. It hurt to breath. No matter what position I was laying in, it was always painful. I took some pain reliever and started to ice my side. It was about this time that my wife received a text message on her mobile phone. Just like that, she was all, "OH OH OH OH.." and ran downstairs. She came back with the newspaper trying to show me that my photo took second place. I would have been more excited about it, but I wasn't feeling very well.

Here is a scan of the newspaper. I only have an A4 scanner so I had to scan it in 4 sections. I put them together in Photoshop.

And here's the trophy I received. It's only a little over 20cm tall.


Here is the original photo. I saved it with an sRGB color profile and brought it to my friends print shop. He has a nice machine, but when he printed it out the first time, it looked like it had too much red. We dialed around the settings and came up with something close to this, but just a bit lighter.


This photo wasn't my favorite. I was hoping for a different one to place. I heard that the judges were a bit bias and liked more of the human element in photos so I submitted one more like this, but the others were of just streams in nature settings. I really didn't think this one would place.

As I was looking at the other photos that got honorable mentions, I noticed that they were from not just Amami, but other nearby islands as well. I guess Nankainichinichi (the newspaper), distributes to the other nearby islands, too.

It was a good experience. Although I've only been taking photos for a short time, it made me happy I was able to place 2nd. I'll try to not let it go to my head. Now that the rainy season is at an end and I feel much better, I'll be out taking more photos.

Our daughter Jade had her birthday on May 30th. We let her have a birthday party and she invited quite a few friends. I made birthday party invitations for her to give to whom ever she wished. I was surprised she gave them out to a few boys.

My wife's cousin has been studying baking for some time now and we asked her to make Jade's birthday cake. Jade said she likes chocolate and wanted a chocolate cake so that's what she got, a chocolate chocolate and more chocolate - cake. I like chocolate too and thought it was pretty delicious.

I don't know why I feel it's a shame to put candles on a cake. I also feel it's a shame not to have a birthday party without a cake and candles.









When the party was over, we sent the kids home and we went to a karaoke box to have some fun singing. That was something else Jade wanted to do for her birthday.


They had a food menu so we ordered something to eat. Jade ordered udon and it came boiling hot.


Those are just a few of the photos I took of Jade's birthday.

They had plenty of people who performed a few numbers at this anniversary party. There would be way too many photos to show if I showed everyone who performed so I picked just a few.

As I said in my previous post, Maa is a very talented DJ. He is mixing CDs here but he usually uses vinyl LPs. He mixes a bunch of different music genre. I've heard him mix Reggae, House, R&B and Hip Hop. I get a kick out of how he dresses up sometimes for different events. He makes DJing look like a lot of fun.



I can't remember this guys name for the life of me. He recently returned to live here in Amami. I'm not sure where he lived while he was away. We had many people perform on the guitar, but this guy was by far the best. If you've ever seen the movie August Rush, this guy puts that movie to shame. It was truly amazing what sounds he could produce with that guitar. I've never seen a guitar used as a percussion instrument as well as a guitar. His hands and fingers looked like spiders running up and down the neck of the guitar.







We also had a few people perform on the Ukulele. I can't remember this girls name either, but she also recently returned to live in Amami.



This is Kengo Fumoto. He is the owner of the local FM radio station here in Amami, D-WAVE. Kengo also owns Asivi Roadhouse. He plays many different instruments. I know he can play the guitar, bass, drums and a few others but I'm not exactly sure what they are. He also performs in several different bands. One of the most famous he plays guitar for is a comic band called Salmon & Garlic. I posted a few Salmon & Garlic photos in my brother-in-law's store anniversary post, but you can't see Kengo in any of them. Although Kengo was fairly drunk in the above photo, he still played very well. I was surprised.



As Kengo played the guitar, Akihiro (Susumocho's owner's younger brother), sang along. It was pretty funny listening to an ad-lib of Bob Marley's No Woman No Cry. What was particularly interesting about this little jam session was Kengo was so drunk, he would start off playing one song and end up finishing with a completely different song. I got a kick out of it.





The night rolled on. Many people performed on the guitar, ukulele and turn tables. When it started to get a little slower, Yasuhiro took his turn on the guitar. He mainly plays bass guitar but recently he has been practicing acoustic guitar. I myself have been trying to learn to play acoustic guitar and I practice with him sometimes. Yasuhiro likes to play bossa nova and I like to play rock ballads. Although what we play is different, it's still fun to get together with him.

I had plenty of fun at this anniversary party. I didn't stay until the end but I heard it went on until about 4:00 in the morning. Just a bit too late for me.

I've been quite busy these past few weeks with work, friends and family. I haven't made any post recently and I apologize. It's the rainy season right now and I haven't taken many photos. At the end of last month my friend invited me to his anniversary party for his restaurant and I brought my camera along to take some photos. It was dark and difficult to take photos in that setting but I did my best and I thought I'd share a few with you.

The name of the restaurant is SusuMucho. You can find their blog here if you're so inclined. Of course, it's all in Japanese.

The whole night consisted of a buffet and a kind of open floor for anyone who wanted to play the guitar. Amami has plenty of musicians and most of them play the guitar. I'll post the musical bit in a different post. For now I'll just show you the photos I took of food and some of the people at the party.

This is the owner of the store. I brought some tortilla chips and a homemade dip and he is trying it out. It seemed to be a hit despite how easy it is to make. My recipe consists of refried beans, jalapenos, black olives and cheddar cheese with a little bit of Japanese mayonnaise.



Maa is also a photographer. He is pretty talented with the different shots I've seen. You can't see it very well in this photo but he brought his camera along too to take photos. He is also a very talented DJ.





It's typical to tip you glass to someone like this while saying congratulations in Japan. It's almost rude if you don't do this at a party like this. The man behind the counter is the owner's younger brother, Akihiro. Akihiro was at my wedding reception when my wife and I got married 12 years ago. Yasuhiro and Akihiro's older sister's husband took our wedding and wedding reception photos for us.



I was using my Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens the whole night and this kind of gives a feel of how dark it really was. I love this lens. It's very fast and I wouldn't be able to take photos in this setting if I didn't have it.



As the night rolled on, people finished off platter after platter of food and they kept bringing out more and more.







People came and left but the small restaurant always seemed to be crowded. I had a difficult time moving around to take photos.



This is Daigo. He runs the surfshop with my brother-in-law, Kazuhito.



This photo is a bit brighter than it really was but, you get the feeling it was pretty dark. As I said before, I love my Sigma 30mm. I couldn't take photos like this if I didn't have it. I kept my camera on aperture priority most of the night. I'm still getting a feel for how to use my camera.