Spring

It finally smells like spring, and the sakura is flowering right on time too. We are hitting the brief, pleasant few weeks between the raw, wet cold of winter, and the oppressive summer heat. We're not doing hanami this year, but I took a couple of quick phonecam shots of flowering cherry blossoms at work this afternoon.

Cherry Blossoms, Ikoma.

One day somebody will release a phone with an actual good camera in it. One day.

Spring is over, Golden Week is here

Spring ends and summer finally begins. Golden Week is coming up along with several days of good weather. We're going on an overnight trip to Toba in Mie prefecture in eastern Kansai. It's the home of cultured pearls and pearl diving, and there's a good aquarium too if we have time. Should be fun.

I haven't really posted pictures in a while, so here's a selection from this spring.

Sakaisuji Honmachi station, and a fellow commuter.

Hazy day along the Kobe waterfront. In the background Kobe Port Tower covered in scaffolding while it's being repainted.

The scaffolding is removed a few weeks later, and the freshly-painted tower re-emerges.

I've been doing a fair bit of work-related travel. Here a railway bridge in Kanda, Tokyo.

Shinagawa station, Tokyo.

Osaka has a number of parks that are great to visit during spring and summer. Here a cosy area in Nagai park, south Osaka.

Pink, late-blooming cherry blossoms in Nagai, Osaka.

Fifteen

..degrees, that is, with a hazy midday sun making it feel even warmer. After lunch I bought the first ice cream of the year and ate it while enjoying a short walk around the campus area.

Then, spring weather or not, back to my desk and to the paper I'm trying to beat into shape in time for a submission deadline.

So that was Spring

Springtime is absolutely the best season here in Osaka. It's a sliver of meteorological perfection between the chilly, wet winter and the brutally hot, wet summer - clear, dry temperate days that invite you to go outside and just enjoy life. It is also, unfortunately, by far the shortest season around here.

Sakura at the next-door shrine. It's late dusk and lit by a street lamp so the colors came out pretty interesting. Click on the image for the full experience.

Two weeks ago I used my winter coat and cursed the miserable mornings as I hid behind a rain-lashed umbrella on my way to work. This weekend the thermometer hit 25° and the morning train is already carrying the first faint traces of Eau-de-Summer-Salaryman (a delicate blend of sweaty suits with just a hint of hangover). The actual spring lasted perhaps a week. One good April cold or a business trip and you'll miss it altogether.

Anyway, while it does last (and we had a quick preview about three weeks ago, not to forget) it's really great, and it's always a treat to visit a park or two for Hanami - cherry-blossom viewing. When you've seen one cherry flower you've pretty much seen them all, of course; the real treat is to mingle with all the other people, have a pick-nick, and just generally enjoy the single best time of the year.

People often linger under the trees, eating and drinking, for most of the day and into the night. You might know the woman to the right from earlier posts of mine.

A Hanami party can be pretty improvised, or it can be a seriously pre-planned event. Here a group of drummers set up their stuff by one of the castle moats.

Cherry blossoms. Nice tones, though the sky is blown out.

Osaka castle. Would have been better had I not tripped the shutter by mistake as I was setting up.

If anybody actually reaches the bottom here and wonders why the pictures look a little off: this is my first attempt with slide film (Fuji Provia). I'm not going to make a habit of this - digital cameras do exactly this kind of punchy, contrasty color images so well - but it was fun to try it. The dynamic range is nothing to write home about, but the low grain, the level of detail and the overall look of a medium-format slide on a light table has to be seen to be believed.

I have yet to learn how to scan these properly so I've somewhat butchered the uploaded images. It doesn't help that the files I get - 48 bit 35-40mp image files after scanning and downscaling - are killing my computer. 2Gb memory just isn't cutting it when processing these. If I were to make a habit of slide film, I'd have to get a much beefier machine.

Spring

The winter is finally coming to an end. Herewith, an excuse to post a lot of otherwise unremarkable pictures.

We got cherry blossoms, which means it's spring no matter what the thermometer may say. In this case an early flower on a cherry tree outside the small temple almost next door on Nagahori street.

Winter is too cold for fountains, but they get started up in spring. Here's a small water fountain taken with really short shutter speed; you may want to click the image to see it larger. The frozen water turns almost metallic-looking.

Like every year, we went out into the countryside to pick tsukushi. It's a weed, growing along ditches and embankments, but if you pick these stalks and sauté with sake and soy sauce you get an amazingly good, savoury side dish that goes well with rice.

A few vertical shots around the area of Housono and Seika.

Of course "rural" is relative. This area was actually incorporated as its own city just a year or so ago, and the farm house neighborhoods are like small islands in a sea of modern single-family homes, like pieces of chocolate in a spread of vanilla ice-cream. Most people don't work around here but commute daily to Kyoto or Osaka.

Spring

The winter in Osaka is chilly and grey, and the summer is long and hot, punctuated with typhoons. The intervening spring feels neither as long, nor as well defined as the slow, lingering season of Sweden with the first hopeful sun-driven snow-melt in early March gradually seguing into the first really warm summer days in June. This really is a fairly unmemorable season in comparison. The two things that do set it apart is the cherry blossoms heralding its beginning, and the "Golden Week" holiday signaling its end.

A colleague asked me to take a few pictures of his car during cherry blossom season. "His car" turned out to be a meticulously renovated Chevrolet Corvette in absolutely gorgeous condition. To the left, outside a temple in Takanohara; to the right, in the mountains between Nara and Osaka. A few more pictures here.

Hanami, "flower viewing" is having a party under the cherry trees. For Osaka castle, that means tens of thousands of people barbecuing, eating, drinking and generally enjoying themselves. And this being the age of the digital camera, I doubt a single flower petal has managed to avoid ending up on picture sites by now, as you can see on the left. On the right, a few too many beers have taken their toll, and a couple of revelers decide to settle some grudges.