departures

several of my friends are leaving the country, for good or temporarily. i wish them well in their endeavors. i'm sure we'll meet again.

everything is fine

went up north a couple of times. ishinomaki is one of the less hit places, i should say, compared to kesennuma or rikuzentakata. here you could still see people smiling; in the other places, you are just out of words at the destruction surrounding you. (maybe more on that next time...)

everything will be fine

rainy week

it's been a while since my last post. been busy moving jobs and apartments.

tokyo welcomed the fall with rains which will continue through this week. got a "new" old lens that i've been dying to take pictures with, but i'm down with fever on a perfectly fine weekend.

こどもの日

today is boy's day. i would have wanted to go out and take pictures of the flying carp (the photo above was taken 3 years ago), but the weather is not cooperating. while the weather report says sunny, it is actually cloudy. so much for blue skies. now have to think of something else to do...

さよなら歌舞伎座

東京オリンピック以来歌舞伎座46年の歌舞伎甘栗も本年四月をもちまして閉店と相成りました。長年にわたるお客様のご愛顧に厚く御礼申し上げます。

kabukiza will be closing at the end of the month to be reconstructed as a 29-story building, retaining the facade of the current building. this seems to be the current architectural trend here. (take for example the nomura building in otemachi.) i personally prefer they kept the old building as is. for me, the high-rise jutting out is an eyesore...

anyway, this is one of the few times i asked somebody if i could take their picture. this old man runs a small chestnut stall just outside kabukiza. he's been running the stall since the tokyo olympics for 46 years. it is in a way sad that he will be closing shop, but he can still keep his smile. i'm sure he has lots of memories of this place. i wonder what he will be doing after this.

i forgot to ask his name, but i hope i will be able to ask him one last time on friday.

Noctilux 50mm f0.95

no, this is not taken with that lens, nor do i have one. i have been looking at pictures taken with that lens, and i think it's just too... perfect. i like the bokeh created by my canon more, but it's just too big to carry on a regular basis. plus i always need a toothpick to take the lens off from the body.

how does the old noctilux fare, or even the nokton? off to search for pictures...

now this woman looks like another mad hettie, but when i actually saw her face, she looked like a regular old lady (with an odd fashion sense, at least for me).

ps

i also got an old canon 50mm f1.4. got it cheap and didn't really expect anything special about it. i found it to be actually sharp, but that's about it. will post some when i get the time.