Jonanjima Seaside Park is on an artificial island in Tokyo bay. When runway B at Haneda airport is open, photographers group there to photograph the incoming planes. The lights you see on the water are ships. Just above those are aircraft lining up for their approach. The constellation Orion can be seen above the clouds on the horizon with the pleiades toward the top of the picture. Click on the image for a larger view.
Night Flight from Tokyo
Naomi and I have just returned from a wonderful trip to Tokyo. This is the first time for us to fly out of Haneda airport in Tokyo bay—we have always used Narita, which is far outside the city.
In most respects, Tokyo is probably as far as you can get from a natural landscape—a large part of the land in this image was “reclaimed” from the bay itself. The rivers that at one point meandered across the alluvial plane the city was built on are fixed in their path. The twenty-three wards of the metropolitan area have an average population density of 13,913 people per km². When combined with the neighboring prefectures of Chiba (foreground), Kanagawa (just in the top left corner), and Saitama, the conurbation totals thirty-three million people, about the same population as Canada, the second largest country by land area. Click on the image for a larger view.
Contrasts, Part 2
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Contrasts, Part 1
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Winter Fog
Winter is such a variable season in Maine. With competing air masses from the arctic and the Gulf of Mexico, the shifts in weather can be striking. Click on the image for a larger view.
Winter Forage
The search for food is a concern for animals throughout the winter. Many animals tunnel under the snow pack and so you rarely see signs of their activity. Someone found the dried remains of one of our Black-Eyed Susans. Click on the image for a larger view.
A Year in Color, 2014
This is the change in color of our forest in 2014 for each month of the year from left to right and top to bottom. For another year go here. Click on the image for a larger view.
Satori
Satori is the Japanese word for enlightenment, awakening. Zen Buddhist believe this does not happen gradually, but comes like a clap of thunder. D. T. Suzuki, the Japanese Buddhist scholar and philosopher, describes it as “seeing into your own nature,” “…to see our own ‘original face’ even before we were born, to hear the cry of the crow even before it was uttered, to be with God even before he commanded the light to be.”
The image is of Binzuru on the island of Miyajima in western Japan. I have written about the legend of this charming figure before. This type of scarf is popular with school girls and a kind offering this time of year. Click on the image for a larger view.
Happy 2015
Naomi and I wish you a wonderful and prosperous new year.
By the Japanese calendar, this is the year of the sheep (but not the goat). Click on the image for a larger view.
New Years Eve in Tokyo
New Years is a big deal in Japan. It is simply not a party during the evening of December 31st. It begins then, but will be celebrated for the next several weeks. January is a month of firsts—the first visit to a shrine or temple (hatsumode), the first drawing of water, the first calligraphy, the first day of business, and so on.
This is the main gate to Meiji Shrine, the largest shrine in Tokyo. In the first three days of 2010, 3.2 million people visited this shrine. When you think that most people leave a ¥100 coin (about a dollar) as an offering, New Years is an important time for these places. Click on the image for a larger view.
