Friday, July 2, 2010

Sinking

I was watching the beginning of Battle Royal with a friend the other day, when an image of a school sink appeared on the screen. When i said that the sink looked just like the sinks at my school, he said that he saw a show once, where it said that all of the sinks in Japanese schools are the same.

Here it is:

Thursday, July 1, 2010

10 Minutes in Harajuku

Before going to the Photography Museum on Sunday, and after my experience in the Manga Café, I figured that I would need some coffee to make it through the day. I spent the morning in the park in Harajuku, and also figured I might need to buy another shirt because mine still reeked of tobacco and beer. I didn’t end up buying a shirt, but I grabbed a coffee at the Starbucks and found a great seat at a corner window. It was about 10 in the morning, so more people were on the streets, while I looked over some of the photos from the previous day. I took a few photos of people through the window, but decided that I was probably a bit conspicuous lifting my camera to my eye every few seconds, so I decided to set the camera on the table and do some time-lapse photos of the sidewalk in front of me. There were times when I was itching to take control of the camera to get the frames that I thought were important, but at the same time, it was nice letting the images come as they would.

Some of the most interesting aspects of being in Tokyo is the people that you see walking the streets. This was in a sense, a random sampling of these people in Harajuku. Unfortunately, this was a bit away from the heart of Harajuku and the interesting people that can be seen there, but I think I managed to capture some of the diversity in character and attire than can be seen on the streets of Tokyo. After my coffee I brushed my teeth quickly in the bathroom and was on my way to the museum.

I had my camera set initially to take photos every 30 seconds and then eventually every 15 seconds. I had the focus set manually to the area near the edge of the building, but in hindsight, I should have put it on auto area-focus mode. Here are a series of photos that represent about 10 minutes on a Sunday morning on the streets of Harajuku.