Anyway, I finally met up with Jesslee, a long-time Flickr contact and a super photographer (and a really nice guy) and we went to Awa Odori in Yamato, Kanagawa on July 25. I’ve blogged about Awa Odori before, so I won’t go into too much detail. Instead, I’ll just do more of a visual post.

You can find out more about the history of Awa Odori if you visit the Wikipedia page, but it focuses mainly on the big one in Tokushima, the birthplace of Awa Odori, when, in fact, you can see it performed all over Japan throughout the month of August (and there is a huge one in Koenji at the end of August each year).

So, on to the photos…I seemed to be in a cross-processing mood when I did these, so most of them have a kind of 1974 look to them (which I like) and, by the way, that cross-processing link has a good Photoshop tutorial (which I did not use for these photos but have used in the past).

Before the photos though, here is a short video of one of the Ren (連) performing at Yamato (“ren” means tribe or group and each dance team is called a “ren”, for example a group might be called Shimbashi Ren or Shinobu Ren, etc.) – this was shot with the Canon iVIS HF21:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkUa0qKQaj0

Some photos:

This one (above) is probably my favourite of the evening…

I love the spectator in the lower right corner here:

The fan with the two faces caught my eye here:

A young festival-goer – he got really excited when the dancing started and was dancing too:

And, finally, Jesslee down low and checking his settings – no, really, he is NOT chimping…!
(I love the figure on the right in the background, so I kept this in colour – the black and white version doesn’t really reveal the blurred ren member):

What have I been doing? Well, the main focus has been going to matsuri and shooting people (with a camera). Other than that, I have been doing quite a bit of reading and just enjoying my free time.

What I have also been doing is watching the Tokyo Sky Tree grow – it is, at the same time, both a fast and a slow process. I know that makes no sense, but it’s slow in the sense that it won’t officially open until 2012 and it’s fast in the sense that I occasionally look off the balcony and think: “wow, it’s really progressing in height…”.

I took this last week:

They are about half way to the second observatory, so I’d say that they are at about the 400 metre mark (with another couple of hundred metres to go and a final height of 643 m).

Well, actually, I’ve just checked the official Japanese site, where they post the official progress, and they are at 418 m! (I didn’t know they were posting a height tracker – that’s pretty cool.)

Yes, matsuri pictures coming soon…

It is the capital city of Ehime Prefecture and it is mainly famous for three things: it is home to Dōgo Onsen, the oldest onsen in Japan (and it really looks it), Matsuyama Castle, and eight of the eighty-eight temples in the Shikoku Pilgrimage.

I had been to Matsuyama before a few times, so my main interest was really just to get some good shots of the castle. The weather turned out to be absolutely perfect and the cherry blossoms were still in bloom, so it made for some great photographic opportunities.

Central Matsuyama is fairly small, so, if you’re staying at a hotel, depending on which hotel you are at, you can easily access the castle area by either streetcar or on foot. A map for central Matsuyama can be found here. You can either walk the entire way up from street level or you can take a ropeway or single chairlift up for ¥500 round trip.

The walk up is very pleasant as you climb through a wooded area which is nice and shady, but it is a bit of a steep climb. This is, therefore, not recommended for anyone who is really out of shape or has any medical restrictions or for those who just dislike the idea (and the high humidity in Japan in the summer is another consideration if you are visiting from June to September).

Once you arrive at the castle grounds up top, there is a nice flat open space which many locals seem to use as a place to relax and enjoy the view. When I visited this time, it was around 1:00 pm, so there were a number of people up top eating lunch and just relaxing. You don’t have to pay anything to access the area, so it is a bit like a public park up on a hill top.

The view from up top, just before you enter the wide open space in front of the castle

Some people relaxing up top and enjoying the sunny afternoon and the view

If you opt to actually enter the castle itself, you have to pay an additional ¥500 (you can buy a combined ticket for the ropeway and castle admission for ¥1000 or opt to buy them separately). It is definitely worth it to enter if you are remotely interested in Japanese castles: it is one of only three multi-wing, flat hilltop castles remaining in Japan. It was constructed by the feudal lord Katō Yoshiaki over the course of 25 years and completed in 1627. Four of its eight strategic gates are designated national cultural treasures and there’s a small museum display inside with some calligraphy and some samurai armour.

You can also get a good view of Matsuyama from inside:

View from inside the castle

However, aside from all of the above, my own personal motivator for visiting the castle was to get some good shots of the castle walls and structure. Here are a few of the results:

And, what I really wanted was some black and white shots like this:

These wall shots are all 3 exposure bracketed shots (-2/0/+2) processed in Photomatix (so, yes, they are HDR, if you are wondering how so much texture in the brick came through).

I am not really that interested in Gundam, but I was somewhat interested in the construction and display of an 18 metre, 35 ton, 1:1 scale replica of Gundam that was at Odaiba as part of the Green Tokyo Gundam Project from July to the end of August. I went over in early August to take some photos, but it was so crowded and so hot I only took a few and beat a hasty retreat. I happened to be free on September 1 (which was the day after the “Project” ended), so I thought I’d jump over on the ferry and get a few better shots (or witness the start of the dismantling if it had already begun).

There was still quite a crowd, including a few members of the media, either getting in their last shots or wanting to also document the dismantling. I took a few photos for some HDR fun (like the photos above and below) and made a little video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07DaLEr9Ul8