2010 | shiftyshutters

Haikyo in Japanese means 'ruins' or more literally 'abandoned place'. Most foreigners think of Japan as a sardine can with extremely expensive land prices. This can be true for places such as Tokyo but once you leave the city there are wide open spaces and rolling hills.

Businesses, schools, hotels and hospitals etc. that close down are often left to decay as it is more cost effective then having them knocked down. For this reason there are actually a lot of abandoned buildings scattered across the Japanese country side. Some cool...some creepy.

I came across this old Ski resort lodge and ski lift in Fukushima Prefecture along the Azuma Skyline. The weather on this day was amazing! So windy I had to fight to stand up...I wanted to go inside but the wind was ready to take the roof off. With the weather like this, it wasn't surprising to see the condition of the building so bad.

Sakae, Nagoya

Red Petals in Nagano City

A walk in Nagano City

Was back in Matsumoto for a weekend to visit some friends and to get there I have to change trains at Nagano City. So decided when the weekend was over and I was heading back home, I would stop of at Nagano. First 3 photos are from the city area and the final image is from Zenkoji Shrine.

End of Summer

Summer was blazing hot and mostly uncomfortable.... so was a relief when the humidity lifted. Another shot from the 35mm.

Stone Faces

Gochikokubun-ji

A buddist temple around the corner from my apartment, taken a few months ago at the end of summer.

Taken with my new lens, a 35mm f1.8

Best bang for buck must have for Nikon :)

Love the depth of field!

Next few updates will be brought to you by the

35mm.

Here is another for now.

Sakura from Kyoto

Long overdue but better later then never right? So anyway...

April is a great time in Japan. When you think Spring, you think Sakura (cherry blossoms). The whole year they are a brown, drab boring looking trees with no flowers but at the end of March they start to pop up and for 2 weeks at the beginning of April they are at full bloom.

First two pictures were taken in Kyoto at the end of March. The cherry blossoms were really slow to bloom. This winter was quite cold and the whole time we were there it was raining and we didn't see the sun at all.

One of my favourite pictures taken in Kyoto.

But as fast as they bloom they are gone which also makes for a beautiful scene where the ground is completely covered in pink leaves. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

There are parks and areas that are full of sakura trees and when they are at full bloom the Japanese have a Hanami festival. Which is a flower viewing festival. It's pretty much sitting under them eating and drinking beer.

Next post will be some pics of the Sakura in full bloom while I was living in Matsumoto ;)

Nagaoka Fireworks Festival

Japan's most famous Fireworks festival happens every summer in a city called Nagaoka in Niigata Prefecture, at Shinano-gawa(river). A one hour commute for me by local train :)

The atmosphere was crazy, let me set the scene for you. As soon as I got of the train it was packed and there were police/security ushering people out of the station. I have never been to this city so it was easy to just follow the hundreds of people walked the main road toward the river and bridge. I pass some food stalls and people selling cold drinks straight out of tubs of overflowing ice. It was about 35 degrees and super humid.

People sitting all along the footpath on picnic mats are already drinking and eating, waiting for the shot to start . When I get to the bridge there are police ushering cars over the bridge but hundreds of people line the footpath which kind of looked dangerous because at any second someone could get shoved into the line of traffic. I'm thinking where to go for the best vantage point and thought there is no way I can extend the legs of my tripod in this crowd. All of a sudden a policeman blows his whistle and the hundreds of people on the footpath start running onto the road. I seriously stopped and thought wtf did a bomb go off? Why are they running.

People were running and laying out there picnic rugs in mid air and within seconds the bridge was filled with people sitting down. I saw and ran in a panic too lol.

I have seen a lot of fireworks before but the sheer scale of this was crazy. 20,000 rockets in two nights. The displays were crazy for the finale, there were 9 fireworks fired simultaneously along the river so the whole river was lit up. But that's not all, on top of those 9 wide displays were explosions ontop of them, so it created a massive wall. And that's not all again, they had a special firework which I have never seen before that is fired 650m into the sky and you have to crank your head all the way back to be able to see it.

Just realised how much I wrote!! So unusual of me, anyway hope the words were as interesting as the photos.

げえんきでね

genki de ne

Matsumotojo (松本城)

Here is the pride of Matsumoto City. Matsumotojo (松本城) or Matsumoto castle. Its a 16th century 5 tiered castle and is the oldest of its kind still standing in Japan. Surrounded by a moat which is now surrounded by a nice garden/park and which is all surround my the mountains of the Japanese Alps.

I was lucky enough to live 10 mins from here. I will miss chilling here on Sunday afternoons.

Ten Minutes

It's amazing how much can change in 10 mins, sun setting over the Japan Sea (日本海 - Nihonkai).

And a bonus that it's a nice and cruisy 2 min bike ride from my new apartment.

Kamikochi (上高地) Pt. 2

So here are a couple more pictures from Kamikochi (上高地). The Kanji means 'upper highlands', the area is a 15km plateau in the Japanese Alps. I camped here in early May with a bunch of friends from Matsumoto.

This place is seriously amazing! It's so nice, surrounded by mountains with a river running through the middle and forest on either side and wild monkeys everywhere.

It was sub zero over night, impossible to sleep. Funny thing is we found out everyone was actually awake through the night but it was too freezing to pop your head out of the sleeping bag to talk. So for a good few hours we lay in silence and everyone thought everyone else was asleep lol!

This photo was taken at about 4-5am. Freezing temps and sunlight coming through so early meant minimal sleep. The first day was overcast, so we were all excited to see the sun, but after the sun rose, all of a sudden the weather changed dramatically. It became cloudy, the winds picked up and we got dumped with snow. Had to fight through the snow and build a fire for warmth. Most difficult fire to build when your getting owned by snow and strong winds. haha good times.

Kappabashi (Kappa-mythical Japanese creature that is green, has webbed feet and a beak and a disc on its head and eats cucumbers. Hashi- bridge. Hashi becomes -bashi when added with a name.)

Steps of Kappabashi.

Hoping to head back there next month now that it's summer!

P.S I uploaded more happy snaps from Kamikochi on Facebook if you want to have a lookie.

Freezing Water at Kamikochi

Finally! I am back it has been way too long.

New country, new city, new layout and a new watermark.

Sorry for the neglect, as you can understand I have not had access to a computer. I have been borrowing a friends computer to transfer photos of my overloaded SD cards onto an external HD. Finally got a laptop last week and oh my goat I had 30gb of photos to sift through, which I still have not finished doing.

Few things to help navigate the new layout. From the home screen click the image for an enlarged version and click the title to take you to post. But if your reading this you probably figured that out. Comments are at the end of the post and the chat box is still there, feel free to spam me with love haha

Picture is from a place called Kamikochi which I camped a couple of nights in early May. Place is amazing, more pics to come.

For those interested pic is taken at , f/22 @ 10mm, 1/8 secs, ISO 200. Standing in the water with lens about 3 cm above the water. Hopefully providing this info will inspire the up and comers (looks at Lyhn and Harv) to get out and shoot and upload some awesome pics soon ;D

Thanks for the memories Hakuba!

Hey guys! Thought I would throw up some pictures I took in the last few days in Hakuba. This area is in the backyard, I could always see it from my bedroom window and finally decided to get out there. It was a nice day, sun was out so made for some nice shots. Then the day after directly after there was a dumping of 25cm. So I took the same shots to show the contrast and how different the place can look.

Selection of photos from Kyoto ft Harvs

This is long overdue but better really late then never lol so...Here are some pics from my trip with Harv. These are the only photos I have of the trip as all of them are at home on the home comp. I only had these ones cos they happened to still be on my SD card in my camera. Anyway, there from Kyoto which i think is one of my favorite places in Japan. It gives you a feeling of the real 'old japan' and is a good change from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. Everything here is way more chilled out and life is more relaxed. The architecture of the old buildings and shrines are really nice too. We were also lucky to come in Autumn, which makes for some epic pics :P

We stayed at traditional Ryokan which is a type of traditional accomodation. With futons and tatami mats. Wish I could show you guys pics but there all at home.