Amami Superman Photography

On our trip to Kyushu, as we were making our way towards Takachiho Farms on the Ebino Plateau, we stopped to take some photos of some deer on the side of the road. It was cold and after getting back into the car and heading out again, Jade mentioned she had to use the restrooms. So we stopped at a public restroom just down the road. As the girls were in the bathroom doing their thing, I got out to read some of the signs they had posted nearby.

As I was reading the signs I noticed off to the side some trees that had a bunch of fungus growing on them. I took a moment to take a few shots of this.

I wish I could be as artistic as nature is...

In my mind, when I think about Kirishima, I think about its onsens. As I was trying to find out more about Kirishima, I came across loads of information. Here is a quote from japan-guide.com.

From japan-guide.com
Kirishima is an active volcanic mountain range that lies on the border between Miyazaki and Kagoshima Prefectures. It is made up of mountains, highlands, volcanic lakes and hot springs and offers good hiking through beautiful mountainous surroundings. Although geographically separate, Kirishima and Yakushima Island make up the Kirishima-Yaku National Park, one of Japan's oldest national parks.

The mountains of Kirishima play an important role in Japanese mythology. They are said to be the site where the god Ninigi no Mikoto, grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu, was sent to rule over the earth and establish the lineage of Japanese Emperors. At the top of Mount Takachiho-no-mine you can see the spear sunk in the mountaintop, which Ninigi no Mikoto used to descend to earth.

Ebino Kogen and Kirishima Onsen are the two most prominent resort towns in the Kirishima area. Ebino Kogen on the Miyazaki side of the border, is a small village with a couple of hotels in a highland area surrounded by mountains and volcanic lakes. On the Kagoshima side is Kirishima Onsen, a more developed hot spring town with good baths and nice views over Kagoshima Prefecture.

You can find this page here at japan-guide.com

So there we were driving through a volcanic region and this is one of the sites we saw off the side of the road. It's a place where the hot water just runs out from the rocks on the side of this mountain.


I wanted to walk down and take some other photos, but it was raining and wet and I didn't feel like getting drenched while walking down through this grass.


The air was thick with the smell of sulfur. The rotten egg smell almost made Jade vomit when she got out of the car.

The more I read about Kirishima, the more I want to go back there. I feel with our tight schedule, I missed a bazillion photo opportunities. Maybe next year in the fall we'll go back there and spend a few days.

On our trip to Kyushu, after arriving in Kagoshima, driving to Fukuoka and spending the night in a hotel, we woke up early the next morning and headed back to the Kagoshima Prefecture.

We had planned out some places to take our daughter Jade. The first place we planned on going was the Takachiho Farms. They have a few events that only happen at certain times of the day so, again, we were pressed for time. Takachiho Farms is actually in Miyazaki I believe, but it's very close to Kagoshima on the Ebino Plateau. We got off the freeway at the Ebino JCT and headed over the mountains towards the Ebino Plateau.

On our way, we came across the Kirishima-Yaku National Park. As we were passing one of the many parking lots there, my wife points out some deer in one. Not wanting to scare them away, I pulled the rent-a-car off the opposite side of the road. As I started to snap shots off, I thought it would be cool if we could get Jade in some of these photos. I told Jade to move very slowly towards the deer so I could get a photo of her. It took a minute or two for her to finally get close and when she turned around, I took as many shots as I could. Then the cars started to roll by.

As the first car stops off the side of the road right next to the deer, I was screaming in my head, "You're going to scare them away! IDIOTS!" But to my surprise, the deer didn't run away. More cars came and stopped and soon the side of the road was full of people and cars and a good photo opportunity turned sour.

These are some of the photos I was able to take before everyone showed up.

I read somewhere that Kirishima was used as a filming location for the James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice. I've seen the movie, but I'll have to watch it again to see if I can recognize where was filmed.

After returning back to Amami last week, I've been devastated again by another cold. It's tough for me to take off work, especially during this time of the year. Today was the first day I felt halfway decent enough to get out of bed and get some thing done on my computer. Good news is my ear infections are better and my ears are clearing up day by day.

Jade ran a 1k race last week. She took 5th place out of close to 40 other girls. Although I felt like I was on my deathbed, I went out to cheer her on and try to take a few photos. It was a cloudy day with breaks of sunshine but for the most part, cloudy. I decided to try to take photos using manual setting. I had it all set up and took some nice photos up until Jade's race. As her race began, the sun peaked out from behind the clouds. I, being the enthusiastic encouraging father I am, was yelling at the top of my lungs while taking photos and completely forgot to compensate for the bright sun. I pretty much ruined every photo of her race. I wanted to kick myself. As the saying goes, we learn from our mistakes...

The past 3 weeks have been pretty tough on me. I caught a cold that was very mild but I got ear infections in both ears from it. I used to get ear infection when I was a kid pretty regularly, but I don't remember them being this bad. It felt like someone was stabbing me in both my ears with screwdrivers. The pain was almost too much to handle even with the pain killers the doctor prescribed. I ended up having to go to the doctors again and they gave me some different medication to take. The pain killers seemed to work better but I'm still not over the infections completely even after taking all the medication they gave me over the last week.

My wife and I had been planning a trip to the mainland of Kyushu for a few months. I knew I would have a terrible time if I couldn't get over the ear infections so I did everything I could to get better as quickly as possible, but to no prevail. So the past few weeks I've been taking it easy and I haven't taken very many photos.

Last Friday we departed by boat for our trip but even though I was still under the weather, I tried to make the best of it photography wise. I was packing all the luggage so I didn't get a chance while boarding to take any photos but I got a few before and after.

The boat we rode was regular size compared to some of the other ferries I have ridden in the past. Some of them have been bigger than this, some have been smaller. It was kind of weird because they had a boat similar to this from the same company capsize about a week before we left. You can find an article about it here. Only 28 people were on board that particular ferry, but there were way more people on our ferry that night.






They try to get the most money for their space on these ferries. It's almost unreasonable they way they have the rooms set up. If the boat is crowded, you pretty much have to sleep shoulder to shoulder with the people around you. Your experience riding the ferry all depends on when you take it. If you take the ferry on a holiday weekend, you are almost guaranteed to be sleeping next to a strange old man who has had too much to drink and tries to fondle you in his sleep, or next to a restless child who spills his soda on your blanket and then continually kicks you in his sleep during the night. OR, you can catch the ferry on a day during the week and have loads of room around you, plenty enough to sprawl your luggage out and enough space to take up two sleeping areas without causing a fuss to anyone.

We were riding the ferry up on a Friday of a three day weekend. We had everything from high school volleyball teams to junior high baseball teams to the Japanese Defense Force riding the boat. It was pretty packed. But I have to say that the ride up was better than the ride down by far. After getting on board and getting our luggage situated, I went out on the upper deck to take some photos after we left port at around 9:20pm. It had started to rain so I didn't take too many.


As I said, it was jam packed and I decided to just put my camera away and try to find a spot somewhere to read a book.

We arrived the next day around 8:30am in Kagoshima. After getting off the boat we caught a taxi to the Mazda rent-a-car where we rented a car for our travels. This day alone was the main reason for our trip and we were pushed for time. I didn't take any photos along the way or even that night after we got to the hotel in Fukuoka. I was pretty beat and went to sleep right away.

Even now after we've returned from our trip, I find I'm still under the weather. We've been busy with work and it actually took two days to finish this post. I still haven't gone through all the photos I took for this trip but I should be able to this weekend.

We had nearly 60 children participate in this year's Halloween parade. We were still missing a few of them in this photo but by the time we got underway, they showed up and we were off trick-or-treating. During this photo, most of the parents are standing on the other side of the street where I am. It is a bit hard herding children through the downtown streets of Amami, but the parents were quite helpful this year and things went relatively smooth.



We first practice by going to my mother-in-law's store and my brother-in-law's store. I try to make sure that they are enthusiastic about what they're doing so they yell "trick or treat" as loud as they can and to also say "thank you" when they receive their candy. Then we move across the street and start the actual trick-or-treating.



The first shop we hit up is Eco Support Amami. E.S.A. is ran by a family friend Takayuki Yoshikawa. He sells solar panels for residential homes. His wife, Yuuko, is a personality at the local radio station, D-WAVE 77.7FM, and speaks English very well.



We then move right next door to a optical store called Tahara Megane. "Megane" means "glasses" in Japanese.

When we first started our trick-or-treat parade years ago, we used to buy all the candy and divvy it out to all the different stores we were going to visit. The downtown part of Amami where all the shops and stores are have a thing called "torikai" (A torikai is a sort of group the local store owners on a particular street make to help with find ways to stimulate their businesses). The torikai hold festivals on these streets 3 or 4 times a year and they asked us to do our trick-or-treat parade on the day they hold their autumn festival. That means they provide the candy, but we don't get to choose the stores we get to visit. This was OK with us so we have been correlating with the torikai when we do our trick-or-treat parade for that past few years. It works out for all of us. Since it's a festival and we're walking down the middle of it, everyone wants to know what we're doing and how they can join us next time. It's a great way to promote our business.


Some kids have really awesome costumes, but they're not the most easiest costumes to get around in.



As I mentioned before, we don't get to chose which stores and shops we visit. This year we got to visit a lingerie shop. I kind of blushed we came to this shop.



We then made our way to around 20 shops or so. The kids collected quite a bit of candy and after almost 2 hours, we were almost home. At the very end, we made our way down the indoor arcade they have near the post office. It was pretty cool looking back at all the people from our group walking down it.

I said at the first of this post that things went relatively smooth and they did, but it still takes a lot out of you. I have a pretty audible voice, but making sure everyone could hear me took it's toll. The day after, because my voice was so gone, everyone asked me if I had a cold.

Every year we hold a trick-or-treat party/parade for our students. We always put some wall decorations together for a background and took commemorative photos of all the kids and their costumes. Every year I tried to make the background better and better and tried to make the photos look a little more nice. Here is a photo we took in 2006 for Halloween of our daughter Jade. As you can see, there's not much to what we did for a background.

My 24" Intel Core Duo iMac's hard disk died on me the Friday before last. Luckily it is still under warranty so I was able to send it in the following Monday for repairs and it was back to me in no time. They even upped my disk capacity from 250GB to 320GB... BONUS! I've been up to my ears with preparations for our Halloween parade this Saturday so I haven't had that much time to reinstall all my applications. I installed and updated Adobe CS3 yesterday and finally got Lightroom 2 installed and updated today.

Last week on Wednesday I went for a drive with my wife and we decided to go check out a new wind turbine they're building here in Amami.

Just a small post for today. My computer went hay-wire last week and I had to send it in yesterday for repairs. I'm on an older computer at the moment writing this. I didn't have Lightroom or any other photo editing program installed on this computer so it took me a bit to get it in order to be able to use.

Yesterday was a spur-of-the-moment type deal. I was just finishing with work and it was a pretty nice day so I hopped in the car and drove to a nearby spot you could overlook the city. I got plenty of nice shots of the actual sun just as it was going down over the mountains but I liked this one the best.

After the sun went down and I started to take shots with longer shutters speeds of a few seconds, 2 older gentlemen with DSLR's and compact digital cameras drove up in a rental car and came up to right were I was shooting and starting taking photos. At first I thought they were photography enthusiasts like me but I soon realized they were just some tourists with nice cameras. Not saying photography enthusiasts can't be tourists or vice versa, but these guys were just plain rude with their photography.

I was taking photos with shutter speeds over 10 seconds when one of them came up and started to check out my camera while I was still mid shot. I explained to him I was in the middle of a shot and he apologized. After a few more shots, they started to take their own photos. It started to get really annoying when they started to use their flashes and moving in front of my camera to get their shots.

I'm not the most patient guy, but I bit my lip until they left. As soon as they drove off and I was sure they couldn't hear me, I said a few words that I wouldn't want my daughter to hear me say about them.

In the end, I got some shots that I like so it really wasn't that bad. I think I'll try to go take some sunrise photos sometime soon now the sun comes up later in the morning.