Amami Superman Photography

Our dog Missy is half Yorkshire Terrier and Miniature Schnauzer. We've had her for almost three years now and up till now, I've done all her hair cutting. We have a few places here in Amami that can cut dogs' hair, but I've always been apprehensive about bringing my dog to them. When Missy's hair gets long, it gets hard to cut and I've neglected to cut her hair too long over the past few months. With that, I decided to bring her in to one of these places to have her hair cut. This is the photo of her before she got her haircut.

Here is a photo part way through her haircut. She is a beautiful dog, but if you let her hair grow out too long, she looks like some ordinary mutt.

I can't say I'm satisfied with her haircut in terms of what I was looking for, but they did cut her hair pretty well. I'll just have to explain to them more of what I want them to do next time.

I was busy with work and I didn't get a chance to take a photo of her after she was finished with her cut. As I said, I wasn't satisfied with the cut, but it wasn't bad.

If you've ever been to Thailand or its neighboring countries, chances are you've ridden in a tuk tuk (auto rickshaw). My friend, Inai san, recently bought one for his own private use. Here are some of the photos I took of it.

Whenever I come across a dog that looks like it's seen better days (or any animal for that matter), I have to take a photo or two of it. I'm not making fun of them or trying to be mean, I just like to photography old mangy dogs. I made a post before of a dog that has a few links to other photos I've taken of other dogs as well that you can find here.

This dog actually isn't that old and the longer hair is just a part of it's breed. I'm not exactly sure what breed it is, but that's what the owner told me.

I tried to take other photos with a smaller aperture, but I screwed them all up. I held the camera close to the ground and guessed the framing. I wasn't about to get on my stomach and get all dirty to take these photos.

I teach English at a Catholic preschool here in Amami called Shinai Youchien. Shinai means truth and love, youchien means preschool. They name their classes after people and things from the Bible. I'm not quite sure what the above class' name translates to. I think it's the Rosa Class.

The Japanese school year ends part way through March and the new school year begins in April. They have spring break in between. Last Thursday and Friday were my last classes so I decided to take some photos on Friday.

So those were some of the photos of my last day teaching this school year. I'm looking forward to the next school year and meeting some new students. Congratulations and good luck to all those how are graduating and moving on to first grade. Just to say it in Japanese for my Japanese viewers, 信愛幼稚園の卒園するお友達、ご卒園おめでとうございます。小学校でも頑張って下さい！

We arrived at home before 5:00pm and I was at my computer uploading the photos I took from my SD card to my computer when all of a sudden, sirens started to blare. The sirens sounded like the kind you would hear in war movies before an air strike bombing was about to occur. My mind raced as I wondered what to do. My wife and daughter were in the city doing some shopping and I was all alone. Knowing that warnings are for a reason and against my best judgement, I grabbed my other SD card, my camera and headed off down the street to the fishing port. To my surprise, there were other people there as well to check out the tsunami.

When I first arrived, you could already see on the pier just how high the water had risen already and it was receding when I got there. I found this ladder in the above slide show to use as a measure to see how much the sea level was changing in just a few minutes. After just taking a hand full of photos, my camera was out of batteries and I ran back home to grab a new one. Before I left to get a new battery, I saw the sea level drop below the last rung on the ladder.

After getting back, I started taking photos again. More people showed up and soon we had a small crowd standing around watching the sea rise and fall. I estimated by this ladder and how tall I am that it probably rose and fell about 120cm-140cm in the space of about 20 minutes. This happen 3 times in the hour I stood there taking photos. The highest I saw it get was about 20cm-30cm from the lip of the port edge I was standing on. Just across the way were they have a building that makes ice for the fishing boats, the port pier there is a little lower than where I was standing and the sea level was right at the top about to spill over at one point.

I didn't know how long it was going to last, but I felt I was pushing my luck and I didn't want to take any more chances than I already had, so I headed home. I heard a few more warnings come across a loud speaker after that, but no sirens.

Here is another slide show of the pier looking towards the fish market. I made a post last year of the fish market you can find here.

The time intervals vary between shots for both of these slide shows. I was interested in taking photos, but I was more interested in not getting caught in flooding tsunami waters if it did breech. I was pretty much ready to bolt at anytime to the building across the street if things looked like they were going south. You may think that maybe a little over exaggerated, but the sea level doesn't get that high even during the highest of tides. Sometimes you get surge swells during a typhoon, but those aren't even quite as scary as seeing an ocean that calm rising so quickly. It's unnerving.

OK, who is his brother and what do you think he does to make money online?(Is that the younger brother or the guy in the banner add?) I come across stupid web banner adds all the time, but this one really takes the cake. Mind you that the "Learn How" button at the bottom isn't really a button at all, but the whole image is a button. So they had to have made this image with the words and background image together before making a web banner add out of it. I got a big fat EL OH EL from that. The funny thing is, I've seen this add a few times, but I've never really paid any attention to it until now. I know this has nothing to do with photography or Amami, but I had to make fun of it.

I had uploaded the image as a TIFF and I didn't realize it. Sorry if you couldn't see it.