Amami Superman Photography

This was the last day of Golden Week. We decided to go out to the river and see if we couldn't catch some tanaga. Tanaga are crawdads, or crawfish if you will, found in the streams here in Amami. I imagine they're found in other parts of Japan also but I think they call them tenaga instead(TE meaning hand, NAGA meaning long). I think that's how someone explained it to me once. Anyway, I thought it would be a good chance to take some photos for the photo contest the local newspaper is sponsoring.

Judging by the winners' photos of last year's contest, it seems to me the judges like to have the human element in the photo as well. A friend of mine entered a photo of the most beautiful wave I've every seen. I thought for sure he would have placed with it. He didn't. I didn't think the winners from last year were very deserving. I think the judges maybe a bit bias when considering all photos and tend to lean toward the MORE amateur photos. Either way, I'll submit some photos with people in them and some of just rivers and streams and see how it goes. If I don't place, I won't beat myself up over it.


At first, none came out to eat the pieces of rice we were sprinkling in the water. Then we noticed very small ones coming out to eat but none of the big ones we like to catch and eat.



This is our dog Missy. She is a mixed breed. Her mother was a Miniature Schnauzer and her father was a Yorkshire Terrier. We bought her from an online pet shop in Nagoya two years ago. She is a very good dog.



I don't know what these flowers are called but they are in full bloom around the island.




It was pretty warm that day and we even got a bit sun burnt by the end of the day. The cool water felt refreshing.



I got right down next to the water to get this photo. I like this photo and the next one the best. We'll have to see what other photos I can take between now and the contest deadline before I decide which I want to submit.




It was such a beautiful day that day. Looking up the river like this kind of reminded me of the rivers from around my home town in America. We would go tubing down them every year in the summer.


We caught just a few and instead of cooking them up, we put them our big fish tank we have at home. They seem to be pretty happy and content there.

Amami Park was opened in September of 2001. It's a cultural/nature center museum kind of a place. It tells a bunch about the culture of Amami as well as the nature and has a gallery of Tanaka Isson's paintings in the main building. Outside on the grounds it has many different paths to wander around on. It also has a observation deck several stories high to check out the surrounding area.

This last Monday was Green Day (Midori no hi, みどりの日）and they had a few different events for kids to have fun. I didn't run around and check out all the booths. As soon as I got there, I met a good friend and we got into a long conversation. Next thing we knew, it started to rain.

They had a booth on how to make paper airplanes. They also had one for how to make balloon animals and a few others that I didn't get a chance to check out before it started to rain.

You can see in the photo above that it's pretty dark as the rain clouds moved in.




After it started raining everyone ran for cover to the inside of the main building. Here they have different displays for the different islands that make up the Amami Islands. Jade is looking into a peep hole while pressing the buttons for this display. When the the buttons are pressed, special visual effects happen. I didn't get a chance to check it out. It got crowded rather quickly.



They had different settings portraying the "Good Old Days" of Amami. This particular one had an old man sitting at the steps of his home.











Menko is a Japanese game young boys used to play a long time ago. The rules were explained to me once before. I found a site that explains the origin and basics of the game pretty well. That site can be found HERE. You basically throw a card down and the wind created may flip other cards over. You get to keep the cards you flip if any are flipped over from your throw.



This was kind of a fun optical illusion setting they had. You stick your face in the hole and it takes the face of this guy. There are others sitting to the right and left of you. When you press the buttons of this display, the faces of Atari Kousuke and other singers from Amami appear on the faces of others and they sing for you. The optical illusion of this is it's only a half circle. There's just a big mirror in front of you but it looks as if everyone is sitting in a big circle. It's cool because the people you see in your peripheral vision appear at a different angle on the mirror in front of you so they seem like different people.



Kenmun is Amami's version of bigfoot. Kenmun is said to live within the thickest of the gajumaru's(Chinese Banyan) hanging roots. The lore behind the kenmun is a bit different with who you talk to here in Amami but some things are always the same. The Kenmun likes to deceive you. For example, it will offer you noodles which are really worms. The Kenmun's body is also strangely out of proportion. The torso is very small with long legs and arms. It's said that if you saw a Kenmun sitting down with its legs to its chest, its knees would be higher than its head.

I completely pulled a "Dumb Gaijin" move this day. The inside of this area required an admission fee of 500 yen. I absent mindedly walked in the exit taking photos of my daughter Jade. As we left the entrance, my wife found us and told us we needed to pay to get in and I was all like, "Get in to WHERE?" and then I saw the admission booth next to the entrance and realized I walked the whole thing backwards.



We some friends that come from Spain. This is their 5th child. They have 7 children all together. Anyways, on the way out we met them coming in. Gabriel seems like tough kid to me. I like him a lot. We go over to the Martinez' home for dinner every once in a while.



The girl on his shoulders is his second youngest. I'm not exactly sure how to spell her name. I'm not very good with Spanish. I just call her Julie. She's pretty shy as you can see. Alfredo is here with his family working for the Catholic Church.

There's nothing special about these pictures. I just thought it would be fun to show you our Golden Week experiences.

My wife's mother's side of the family own a relatively large Sanrio shop here on the island. If you don't know what Sanrio is, it's the company that made Hello Kitty. This last Sunday they had a Hello Kitty Festival at the local cultural hall. They have these kinds of festivals at least twice a year and they always ask us to help out.

This time they had the actual performers from Harmony Land come and give a performance for the children. The name of the performance was Hello Kitty and Usa Hana's Joyful Party. Although I was helping out with the other parts of the event, I took a few minutes to pop in and take a few photos of the performance.

This was the morning performance. There were a bit more people in the afternoon performance. Right after these three finished, they packed up their gear and headed to the airport. They had another performance booked somewhere else in Kagoshima it seemed.

After playing at the park for a bit, we got back in the car and went to look for a spot to watch the sunset from. We found a spot pretty early so we had a bit to wait. We had snacks and drinks while we waited. We were out in the sun most of the day so we were a bit red with sunburn.

Kevin is always smiling and laughing. He's fun to have around.



"You're welcome." in Japanese is, "Doitashimashite". It sounds a lot like, "Don't touch my mustache."





















I particularly like this last photo. I thought the gradient sky was pretty nice.

So that was just one day of our Golden Week. I'll post more when I get some time.

Golden Week here in Japan is a bunch of holidays all lined up at the beginning of May(April 29th through May 6th). The actual first day of these holidays is April 29th. The 30th ,1st, and 2nd are regular days. Then the 3rd through the 6th are holidays. If the 29th falls on a Thursday or a Friday, you can take one personal holiday and have a full week off. It's pretty nice when that happens.

Saturday we left in the morning and headed to the southern part of Amami. We decided to go to a nice spot called Yadori Beach. But before that, we stopped off to eat lunch at an observation point. Here are a few of the photos I shot while we were there.

So after a quick lunch, we headed out again to Yadori Beach. There were a few surfers and a couple of families out, but we pretty much had the beach to ourselves. I was surprised.




Adan is the palm type of shrub or small tree. A famous painter named Tanaka Isson painted many fantastic pictures of Amami. Some of his paintings had adan and its fruit in them.









This is my friend Kevin. He wants to learn Japanese and is staying with us for 7 weeks. This is Kevin's second time visiting Amami. He came 2 years earlier and liked it so much, he wanted to come back.






Very close to Yadori Beach is Honohoshi Beach. Honohoshi is a beach of smooth round rocks. When a wave crashes onto them and crawls back to the sea, it makes a pretty cool noise. Kind of like a bunch of these rocks being dumped out the back of a dump truck.

Off to the left side of this beach is a big rock formation and the earth underneath it has been washed out.





After that, we made our way to the south eastern side of the island and visited some relatives we don't get out to see much. Then we took a short trip to a park close by in the mountains and let Jade play on jungle gym there.





This is only part of the day. We played here for bit before heading to a spot to watch the sunset. I'll post those photos in the next post.