Monthly Archives: April 2011

Experiences Photography

More wedding pictures!

I’ve finished working on the color pictures of Leon and Machiko’s wedding and uploaded them to the same location as before: http://shashin.njmatsuya.com/lmwedding/

I think they turned out pretty well 🙂

Fun Humor

Photography and daschunds don’t always mix + plus 1 more

I came across this video on a photography site that I was browsing and as one who has recently started in photography and has always loved dogs, I thought it was too funny not to share!


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Also came across this music clip via Stuckincustoms – a violinist (Charles Yang) and a ukulele player (Jake Shimabukuro) duet. From what I understand, they had just met the day before, but they really mesh well together and look like they’re having a ton of fun! (you can see at the end that the violinist has literally shredded his bowstrings!)

Fun

Awww…

News

Tokyo lights

Another timelapse video, this time highlighting the effects of Tokyo’s attempts to conserve electricity. It’s somber, but oddly peaceful as well.

Photography

Something beautiful to start the day

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Experiences Fun

Congratulations!

Yesterday I attended the wedding of a close friend – in fact, I was best man!  Though I did not have to do too much, I think I felt more nervous than Leon (the groom)!  Leon’s been a good friend of mine for… heck, I guess over 10 years now.  We both attended the same introductory courses when starting university, and I have fond memories of us doodling (when admittedly we should have been paying attention to the teacher) during the less exciting sections of the lesson.  I still have some of those doodles stored away amongst my old papers… Leon was also my go-to guy for math/stats courses *shudder*.

He graduated before I did since he had already taken some university courses prior to TUJ, but we still kept in touch over the years.  It’s odd to see how we’re getting older, and (hopefully) more mature.  How time passes…

Anyway, his wedding was a great success – an absolutely lovely day, and everything went off without a hitch.  I’ve created a separate section to upload the pictures that I managed to snap after the ceremony.  For now I’ve only uploaded the black and white versions, but I’ll upload the color versions after I’ve had a chance to go through them – hopefully by this weekend.

shashin.njmatsuya.com/lmwedding

Omedetou Leon and Machiko! 🙂

News

Tweetin’

I’m on Twitter (@njmshashin) – figured it wouldn’t hurt to familiarize myself with this social network platform, especially after I saw it listed as a part of a job requirement!

I’d actually had a twitter account before, but didn’t do much with it, so I’m going to try again and see if I can make more use out of this.

Guess I need to learn the Twitter lingo now right?  IDK… PTM, WDYT?  TTFN! 😉

Experiences News

Another aftershock…

It’s hard to believe that it’s already 1 month after the 9.0 quake that hit on March 11th.  Things (particularly in Tokyo) seem more or less back to normal, aside from the bottled water shortages (PLENTY of tea and soft drinks though!) and dimmed lights.  Just yesterday I was out for tai chi, and the park where I go for my lessons was in full bloom with cherry blossoms and there were picnickers everywhere.

Today though, as I was walking back home from work, I felt the street shift below me.  It is actually quite unsettling to feel that the ground is literally sliding around under you, quite different from being in a car or building during a quake.  For a second I didn’t know what was happening until I looked up and saw my building’s bicycle stand shuddering back and forth.  The building gate was banging back and forth in its frame, and I could see the electrical wires jangling above not far away.

It settled down after about 3 minutes, but even now as I type this, I still feel a few more aftershocks.  Ha… literally as I type this my monitors wobbles from another aftershock…

The big aftershock today was a 7.1, fairly big as well, and unlike the March 11 quake, was inland instead of out to sea as you can see in the image below.   Another point of concern was that it hit close to where people are still struggling to contain the reactors.

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Honestly, I’ve had enough of quakes for a while now… though… I guess I would prefer a lot of smaller quakes instead of another major earth shaker like that of March 11th.

Photography Thoughts

A brief update, and more pictures from Yasukuni

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Things are slowly regaining  a sense of normalcy (in Tokyo at least).  While train stations and stores are still darkened in efforts to conserve power, the general mood and atmosphere is much more upbeat.  The fact that the weather is warming up with flowers blooming all around contributes greatly.

There are still concerns about radiation, both in the air and the water, but there haven’t been any alarms (aside from the ocean water) and stories like this seem to indicate that even the media is starting to tone down their frenzied stories of doom and gloom.  I honestly believe that things are ok.  I am still drinking bottled water, y’know, just in case, but aside from that I’m just grateful that things are as good as they are.

I’m uploading a few more pictures I took at Yasukuni last week, which can be seen at the usual place.