Run A Marathon, Die

I opened up one of my marathon packets, which includes a paper I have to trade for my tshirt/number on race day, directions to parking, and race day instructions.  I was surprised to also find this advertisement for burial plots:

[Those prices are roughly $10,000 and $4,000]

Exiting a Moving Car

[Computer's down again, this time for at least two weeks.  Posts will be spotty, there will be no pictures.]

Today while waiting for a light to change at a major intersection in Naha, I happened to be looking in the right direction at the right time to see a woman jump out of a car that was speeding (15-20mph?) through the intersection. She was opposite me so I saw the door open and then saw her legs and body tumbling under the car.  I don't think the car ran over her, but she also didn't do very well at landing on her feet.  The driver stopped, as did all the other cars while she slowly picked herself up and began walking in the opposite direction from the car she escaped from (which had a male driver and a small boy sitting between the man and where the woman used to be).  The man, realizing the woman clearly wanted nothing more to do with him, closed her door and drove off to get traffic going again.  The woman stumbled to a crosswalk then walked over to a convenience store.  She looked sorta rough - like maybe this wasn't the first time she'd jumped out of a car.

Zamami Fishing Tournament

We had a Zamami fishing tournament on Saturday which nearly every fisherman participated in. Ordinarily, with the type of fishing I do, I'd have a crack at taking the whole tournament (the fish I go after tend to be big, but are also hard to catch), but yesterday the weather didn't work for my non-boat-owning self.  I took out my kayak at daybreak to check out the waves out west, but I got sucked into an outgoing tide and out to sea into the huge rollers.  But they weren't just rolling, they were swirling and breaking and chopping and nearly shredding.  My tippy kayak was dipping and diving and I got really nervous, especially because I was without my life jacket (it disappeared while I was in America).  Fortunately I was able to turn around and ride the waves back into protected waters.  But it spooked [and soaked] me so I went back into port and took a nap.  Then I decided to go up north and check out my shore-fishing spot.  The rocks that the water is crashing over is where I would stand were I to fish from here:

(it's all in the first 20 seconds)

Dejected, I went home at 1pm.  The lone bright spot of the day was finding a small glass fishing float on a beach - oh, and I found another life jacket!

[The fish I fish for eats these fish for breakfast]

Bummed at having spent ~$30 to enter a fishing tournament yet get no fishing in, I moped around in the afternoon.  But my spirits were flipped at the party when I was refunded $10 because I couldn't fish from a boat (I was charged the 'boat' fee since I was going out in my kayak).  Then we had a pretty great dinner and all sorts of expensive prizes (flat screen tv, bikes, coolers, fishing poles) were given out.  I won a space heater for being the first person to show up in the morning!

The Last Dance

Saturday marked the final night of the Zamami Fan (Tourist) Appreciation parties, held every weekend in November.

Naoko's Tokyo Apartment

This is my friend, Naoko, whom I met on Zamami.  When I told her I was coming to Tokyo for nine days so we should meet, she said I should stay with her.  I don't mind staying with friends for a few days, but I am not comfortable putting them out for an extended period.  She insisted, though, and it turned out to be awesome.  Check this picture to see the size of her apartment.  $500/month, which is the going rate for the far outskirts of the city.  The bathroom/kitchen (which has zero counters and only enough space for a single burner) is about half the size of this room. There was also a tiny loft where I took this picture from.

Kerama Deer on Zamami

Kerama deer are a 'historical treasure' on Aka and Geruma.  They also live on a couple smaller islands but have never gained a foothold on Zamami.  It's a respectable swim but not too far, so I've often wondered if the deer aren't adventurous or - more likely - any deer that ever lived on Zamami were quietly killed off by the villagers.

Well recently I've been hearing rumors of deer sightings in Ama and Asa, the two smaller villages on each side of the cove that Zamami occupies.  On Sunday I was walking back to my apartment at 2pm and suddenly saw a deer in the village of Zamami!  Eating!  In the middle of the afternoon!  Surrounded by 10 picture-takers!

This might be a once-in-ten-years event, so the deer couldn't move anywhere without a dozen people around him (how he got to this place to begin with is also a mystery, since it doesn't border on any logical forest he would be living in).  Pretty soon some guys who wanted to catch, kill, and eat him showed up.  I was being heavily recruited, since I have animal wrangling/killing experience.  But as much as I like eating wild meat, I wasn't supportive of killing the only (or one of two) deer on the island. I'd rather let them live a couple years and get a sustainable population going first.  Also, I am told they are a recognized national treasure on Aka and Geruma, but not Zamami. I'm not sure how that works, but I am not keen to lose my job by killing an endangered animal in the middle of the afternoon in the village on a weekend.  With 25 people watching.  Here is a video I took of the attempted capture by my marlin fishing friends:



I left the scene before the deer was captured, which I heard he was.  However, the policeman was in on it, too, so I was also told the deer was driven over to Ama and released.  Hope he finds a girlfriend!

Mariko, Square

Mariko

Took this picture of Mariko tonight at the beach.

iStockalypse Tokyo - Photo of Me

Comparing the untouched colors of this photo with the one below, you can see how much processing I did to that image.  And now that I look at the photo below I really don't like what I've done - fortunately I haven't submitted it for sale yet.

iStockalypse Tokyo #6

This guy was a terrible model - this was about all I could do with him so he wouldn't mess up the shot.

iStockalypse Tokyo Portrait of Me

Take in the last hour on the last day by a stellar photographer in our group (Steve Cole), this photo exhibits why his $40,000 camera is better than mine.  If I had taken this photo without a reflector, the backlighting would have destroyed any detail on the front side of Rina and me.  But his awesome 40mp sensor (which produces 120mb files) has high dynamic range, so it can process both the highlights and the shadows very well.

Rina is just my friend, but this would be sort of an awesome 'couple' shot.

iStockalypse Tokyo #5

[Momo, the other friend we photographed on the last day.  It probably won't sell much, but it's a technically good shot]

iStockalypse Tokyo #4

Probably my favorite shot from the whole trip, there was a 30-minute process to get this picture and required five people to put it together.  We had an afternoon at a park but one of our on-assignment photographers got priority (extra time) because this was his assignment.  That left the rest of us to fill in split the remaining time.  Being the clear amateur I volunteered to go last, which ended up producing the crux (vanishing light) to this image idea.  The on-assignment photographer (Nuno) helped me out with this as his shooting was over.  I brought him down to the area to show him my idea - the girl jumping between blocks - then he flipped it backwards to include the fall-colored tree and mud puddle reflection.  He described this is a potential Vetta shot, which is a reference to iStock's high-end (for "peak creative talent") collection, which sells for higher prices and thus higher royalties.


The girl was quite cold, but a real sport for the shoot.  She hadn't brought pants, but between jumps (maybe 25 of them total?) and during the setup of lights all the adults bundled her up in 4 jackets.  We had a light behind her on the left for rim lighting and another behind me on the right for fill.  It took awhile to get those settings right then I had to manually focus my camera right where I wanted her positioned (because my auto-focus couldn't keep up) then time my shutter release when she was in the air.


It was a really fun shoot and I am very pleased with the results.  It won't sell as well as most of my other pictures, but it was a good learning experience and also fun to concentrate so many resources on just one capture.  Also, I got her mother's email address so I can send this photo along to her.

iStockalypse Tokyo #3

This my friend, Rina, who works at an English school in Tokyo.  She brought a group of students to Zamami last spring and we have kept in touch.  Realizing that photos with models are the ones which sell, another friend on her free day invited a Japanese friend willing to sign a model release and I invited Rina.  We got a bonus day in a park with two first-time models.  They did pretty well!

iStockalypse Tokyo #2

[click to enlarge]

This is one of the few that I am especially proud of because the idea was all mine.  Stock photography is very different than art, wedding, or portrait photography.  The key is to come up with a concept that will sell as stock, then nail it.  I don't know if this concept will sell, but it's certainly better than some of the stuff I shot (see: first day (ugh..)).  I took our group leader with me on this one and he helped with a reflector, but otherwise I photographed this exactly how I envisioned it, which rarely happens.

iStockalypse Tokyo

I've been in Tokyo taking pictures for the last week as part of iStockalypse Japan through iStockphoto.  It's been amazing and I've taken some good pictures, but more importantly I've learned a lot. I'll sample some of my photos over the next week or two.  Unfortunately for the blog Photoshop is just as important in the end result for stock photos as the initial capture and while I've learned a lot on the photography end of things, I'm just scratching the surface of PS. So some, like the one below, will be straight out of the camera.  Fortunately this one needs very little PS work:

South Dakota Pheasant Hunting

South Dakota is the pheasant mecca of the U.S. (world?) for Chinese ringneck pheasants.  Any serious bird hunter aspires to make this pilgrimage at least once in their life.  We had the time and the dog so we made it happen this year.  We more or less blindly poked a finger at a map, only favoring the western half of the state (less driving) than the more famed eastern side.  We weren't at all disappointed.

More than once we would walk into a field and flush 100's of pheasants during a hunt.  The number of birds in this state is just mind-blowing.  We took 35 roosters (males) overall in our four days there and I'm not even sure we made a dent in any one field's population.

My Oregon Bighorn Sheep

The hunt's over.  It all happened really fast.  My dad and I walked eight miles onto the end of a ridge the day before season and did our scouting from there, spotting some rams in a really terrible place to get to.  The next morning, after a minimally-prepared camp, the rams moved our direction and I was able to intercept them and make a 300 yard downhill shot on this ram:

 

[This is what the country looked like where I killed my ram]

[We had to check the ram in with a biologist within 72 hours of the kill.  He drilled a hole (above) and inserted a plug (below) that confirms the ram as having come from Oregon.  He also saved the shavings from the drilling and will send them to a lab where they will be kept for DNA evidence that the ram is linked with me.  Ram heads are worth serious money (he said $50-60,000 for a big one) so this DNA may be important in the case of a stolen head.]

[ODF 525]

[The ram was measured at 181 6/8 inches, or 1 6/8 inches over the minimum to make the all-time record book.  Unfortunately that's not the final call, as this biologist is not an official measurer and the horns have to go through a 60-day drying period first.  But either way - whether it makes it into the Boone and Crockett record book or not, it is a real nice ram and I am quite pleased with it.  He is really beautiful.]

The Sheep Hunt

I'm home in America for this, the rarest hunt likely to take place in my lifetime (I got the one license for 825 applicants).

I've been making phone calls every week all summer to landowners, former hunters, biologists, trackers, and this year's hunters.  With all of that information I've secured exclusive access to the best of three big drainages in my unit, permission to camp in a separate drainage, and the tip of where the biggest rams (which are pretty big) were living ten days ago.  We have as much of a plan as we probably could have at this point, though I will be competing with one other [Oregon resident] hunter and it sounds like he is also aware of the location of these big rams.  My biggest fear is that we are chasing the same ram on opening morning.

I want to try to explain the 'quest for the biggest ram' to the nonhunters of this blog.  Under normal hunting conditions - in a unit that offers unlimited 'over-the-counter' (non-lottery) licenses - I would be pursuing the first legal animal (usually a male with at least 3 points on one antler) I could find.  I would gladly harvest anything legal and be happy with the meat that I get - even happier if I happened across an older animal (because they're smarter and harder to get).  But in the case of this hunt, where there are 60+ rams in the unit and four tags per year, the species is managed under a microscope.  It might be presumptuous of me to say this, but the impression I get is that if I wanted to go out and shoot the first male sheep I encountered, that would be super easy.  The small ones hang out with the ewes or by themselves and aren't particularly hard to get close to.  But there's little challenge in that for me.  So given a tag with an almost 100% chance of a kill, I opt to make the hunt harder by killing the largest ram I can find.  The larger rams are also likely the oldest and smartest.  Just finding them is hard, but getting close is another task as usually they hang together in bunches with other old, smart rams.

There's also the Boone and Crockett record book, which records the largest animals harvested among each specie. They have a somewhat complicated method for measuring the horns or antlers, but suffice it to say I have a decent chance at making the record book off of this hunt, something that has been a dream of mine since childhood.

We're leaving Tuesday morning.  The hunt begins Saturday.

Zamami Undokai 3

Zamami Undokai 2

Zamami Undokai 1

Untitled 4

Untitled 3

Untitled 2

Geruma's 2010 School Shirt

Glad I didn't get suckered into buying this one:

Above Yuhina Beach

Untitled 1

[traditional Okinawan attire and dance]

Handmade Rope

Computer's been down for a couple weeks.  Hurray for local people who fix things and don't charge insane rates (like Apple Japan's $540 flat fee).

[At Geruma's Sports Day last week, this was the winning rope woven in three minutes by an old guy.  It's over three meters long, woven with rice stalks.]

iStockalypse Japan

As a contributing member of iStockphoto, I check out their forums from time-to-time.  Last week I stumbled upon a thread about an event called iStockalypse Japan.  iStockphoto does these iStockalypses every year in various cool places around the world.  I've never looked into them much because they didn't seem too relevant to me.

One of the difficulties with living where I do is that I am really isolated from other people who do the same things that I do.  So my opportunity to learn things in a hands-on environment is nonexistent.  My photography has improved a lot since arriving here, but there is still so much to be learned by standing next to another photographer and asking questions.

So I entered the drawing for a place at iStockalypse.  There were 10 slots for invited (professional) photographers, 20 slots for iStockers (note the apt coincidence with 'I stalk her') from around the world, and 15 slots for iStockers within Japan.  I ended up getting an invite a couple days ago and had to do some quick 'asking for more time off from work' and changing my plane tickets (note to everybody: i think airlines make their money on people who change their tickets).

I've sadly had to cut 4 days off my hunting trip, which is a huge bummer.  iStockalypse is nine days long and in a high-end district of Tokyo.  We'll each have three days of studio shooting, three days of out-on-the-town shooting, and three other days that I forget what they're for.  Everything but my transportation, food, and lodging is paid.  (i.e. the huge expense of models and lighting is being covered by iStock.) I also get to sell all the photos I take, as the purpose of this event is to add a lot of Japan-related content to the iStock collection.

That's about all I know right now. It should be awesome.

From Takatsukiyama Observatory

The Weight of Stamps

Today I went to the post office to mail a letter.  I'd already checked the weight on my home scale (salvaged from the dump) and it was a couple grams over, so I removed one of the four pictures inside.  Still looked like it was going to be close.

The post office scale had it at 25.5 grams, a half-gram over the threshold between ¥110 and ¥190. I pleaded with them that the stamps must weigh half-a-gram.  They said okay, and let it go through for ¥110.

An Awesome Trade

There were a ton of foreigners - mostly Europeans - on Zamami this summer.  Among them was a girl from Switzerland who brought along her cycling panniers to Osaka, where she got off the plane and bought a touring bike.  She proceeded to ride it around Japan for four months, wrapping up her trip with two weeks of relaxing on Zamami.  Being in the market for a second bike to have around for guests, I asked her what her plans were for the bike.  She said she would just give it away in Naha before leaving.  I was very keen to include myself in her 'giving away' thought process so I let her know.  I even offered to pay her some money for the bike, but in the end she gave it to me for free (along with some spare parts and valuable tools).  (Well, I gave her a half-dozen of my enlarged photographs and a promise to email some hi-res versions.)

The bike is too small for me, but it's still awesome.  I am planning to do a cross-Japan ride before leaving so the racks might come in very handy for me.  Regardless, like the fishing lures I gave away earlier this week, the bike will end up being put to good use.  It's nice to be in the right place at the right time and be involved in a transaction that benefits both sides.

Free Fishing Lures

I was staying with some military contractor friends on the Okinawan mainland a few weeks back.  The husband, who has been transferred back to DC, was in the process of unloading 12 years of crap.  He knew I was  fisherman, so he said "hey, I've got this big box on the front porch full of fishing gear that you can have."  

The box probably weighed 120 pounds and I couldn't lift it alone.  They gave me a ride to the port, where I had to have help getting it on the boat.  This week I finally sorted everything and untangled all the birds nest of lines - with wire cutters.  I laid all the lures out on my floor, took out what I wanted (very little), then called up the fishermen I knew and had them come over to pillage the pile.  75% of it is gone now with a promise from one guy to take whatever was left over, so I've successfully redistributed all of this closeted fishing gear to people who will hopefully use it - and maybe strengthened a few friendships in the process.

32

I can't remember half of the Christmases from the last twelve years, but I can remember nearly all of my birthdays.  There's been some pretty interesting stories mixed in there and today should hopefully stick in my memory as well. I went to work this morning amid all sorts of typhoon warnings and canceled boats. At 9:30am, even though there was no wind to speak of, they told me to go home.  It took until tonight for the real typhoon to get here and it hasn't been that bad for me (compared to my friends Cliff and Vaughn, who were both under the eye of the storm and are both currently without power).  I'm a little bit west of the lower portion of Okinawa in this graphic:

It's becoming a habit of mine to list some facts in my birthday posts, so here goes:

Birthday height, 2010: 181cm
Birthday weight, 2010: 83kg (183lbs)
Net worth, 2010: loaded
Taxes paid to any government in 2010: 0
Years until I can retire: I'm just working because I like it

I've just wrapped up my third year and will be entering my fourth school year tomorrow.  The magic of arriving at a new place and exploring the location, the language, and the culture wore off awhile ago.  I'm still enamored with a couple of those, but the novelty is gone.  It's my life to send and receive Japanese emails with locals and to eat my lunch with chopsticks every day.  I like the sashimi and the festivities, but I have no interest in miso soup or community meetings.

In the last year my accomplishments are less a list, more abstract.  Yes, I caught my two marlin, and a few other smaller fish from a kayak.  I ran a PR at Tokyo (and disciplined myself into a two-month injury in the process).  But I also had a relationship with a girl, which added an 'adult' element to my life that I haven't had in awhile.  I also deepened my friendships with a couple of people in my Okinawa English teacher group.  I love the transient life that I had before Japan, but relationships and stronger friendships are a nice benefit of staying in one place for awhile.

My Japanese speaking ability is as terrible as ever, but this year I decided to give up on actively pursuing it.  It's a dark cloud that hangs over my head and studying only brings me further down.  So I've decided to invest that study/worry time into something more productive for my future: learning software.  I've done some tutorials for Adobe Illustrator and Dreamweaver (and made a website!).   Photoshop is next en route to getting a stronger grasp on my photography post-processing.  Hopefully by next year the pictures I post to the blog will have gone from 'straight-out-of-the-camera' to 'wow!'

Zamami English Guide [dot com]

I get paid to do something nobody else on this island can do.  But it's still pretty easy for me.  It's a fun job and I do my job, but I have a fair bit of excess time and sometimes feel guilty about being paid so well to do something that is so easy for me.

So in an effort to do something for the wider community utilizing my scarce resource, I hatched a plan to build an English website to help foreigners plan their trips here.  I've spent much of this summer break going through my photo archives, then making trips around the islands to gather the pictures I didn't yet have.  I've typed up descriptions of everything and gathered pricing for all the restaurants and most of the hotels with English-speaking staff.  The project was more work than I'd anticipated, but not frustratingly so.  With the help of my friend Wren, I was able to get it online last week.

Along the way I've learned to build a website, albeit through a software program.  You'll see that my layout is simple (on purpose) and in some places boring (because I don't know how to make it exciting yet). But that and the few remaining missing pictures are my only caveats.  Please go take a look and get back to me on how I can make it better!  (If you have better layout ideas for the "Places To Stay" and "Restaurants" pages, please tell me.)

www.zamamienglishguide.com

Mariko and Isako

I had my first big gathering of JETs and friends on Zamami this weekend.  The usual summer trip to a neighboring island was canceled, so I jumped on the opportunity to invite everybody out to see Zamami Matsuri (festival) on Saturday night.  The weather was nice, everybody seemed to have fun, and the local economy was thankful for their visit.  In all I think there were 33 people associated with me who came out for the weekend.

Sunset

Gecko Trap

[whoops]

Exchange Students and Jesus

Our sister city students - from Tsumagoi, Gunma prefecture - came for just 24 hours yesterday, their trip limited by earlier boat cancellations due to a passing tropical storm.  We took them on a kayak trip yesterday afternoon.

I was planning to paddle along in my ongoing 'sit-in' kayak experiment, but there was one poor extra girl who didn't fit into a student pair.  She ended up being awesome and handled the "uh-oh, I have to paddle out to that island with a foreign English teacher!?" experience well, even treating me to super polite Japanese.

The small island we paddled to has a sandy incline where people often spell out love messages or sign their names with flat, black rocks.  I was dismayed to see that some proselytizing Christians had gotten ahold of the rocks.  I think it had probably taken them a long time to put this message and huge cross together:

But it only took me four minutes to dismantle it:

On Base!

We all want to get on a military base for access to cheap American products.  It took me three years, but I finally made it this week.  I didn't have permission to get into the commissary, but the awesome lady I was with asked the pass-checker-lady for a reprieve and I got through!  Unfortunately I didn't have a big backpack along on the trip, so I had to be conscious of weight (which is why there aren't ten jars of natural peanut butter there). 

How Long Are Pregnancies?

At the marlin party the other night, our server was pregnant.  We all know her, as she originally moved to Zamami to work for the marlin captain, then met her future husband on Zamami.

I asked when she was due and she said was six months into the pregnancy, so she had four to go.  I said, "Wait!  Six plus four is ten!  But babies only take nine months!"  The seven people there all jumped in and told me, in an 'everybody knows this' tone, that babies take ten months and ten days.

This is clearly not something I'm an expert on, but I really thought that babies took nine months.  I realize that some months have fewer days, but that doesn't account for the 40 day difference. I didn't really know what to say so I ended it jokingly saying that American babies only take nine months.

I know I could Google this, but I thought it'd be more fun to throw it on the blog.  How long do babies take?

Edit: Thanks to Julie in the comments for pointing out this very timely other blog post on the issue.  It appears that Japanese count their pregnancy months based on the lunar calendar, which makes each month a 4-week month.  Pregnancies are 40 weeks, so divide that by 4-week months and you get ten months!  (The problem, of course, is that last night when the girl was calculating her due date she was using calendar months.  Also, I wonder where the extra 10 days are coming from?  Anyway, thanks Julie!)

Two Days, Four Marlin

I had a going-away party in Naha to attend on Sunday night and planned to renew my visa on Monday. But as with any plans, they will be broken in case of a marlin fishing opportunity.  As will my rescheduled plans to go to Naha on Monday morning when the captain decides to go two days in a row. I'm getting dangerously close to losing my visa (I think it expires Wednesday) and going to jail, but the new plan is to go in tomorrow.

Yesterday we have five hits and landed two fish.  This video shows a rare - and especially awesome, considering the time gap between the two events - double hit.  Unfortunately one marlin got off, as usually happens.  It would've been fun if he hadn't, though, since I was the only spare body on board (so I'd have to handline the fish in and spear him).  The fish were running in different directions, too, so the chances of landing them both would have been good.

[note how busy I am]

This video is of bringing the fish into the boat:

[the colors on my camera are still whacked out - still don't know why]

This first fish was 37kg.  I caught one later on (30 minutes fight time) that was 60kg (132lbs.).

[mine is on the left - my fourth marlin, 60kg]

Today we went out with the captain, me, and two girls.  We were 2/3 of the way through the first fish when Yukibo (captain) was teaching the other girl how to drive the boat.  He showed her how to put the engines in gear and go quickly forward.  This tightened the line and freaked the marlin out.  He started jumping and threw the hook.  Miki, who was fighting the fish, was none too happy about wasting all the effort she'd put in.

But she got the next fish, which took her an hour (and completely wore her out) and weighed in at 98kg (216lbs.).  For the first time I got the job of handlining the fish in for the last 5m.  It's dangerous, but also exhilirating, just you versus the marlin with no mechanical advantage during the most dangerous part of the fight.  I have to bring the marlin up and turn him on his side so the spearer can spear him through the gills.

[mine is in front - my fifth marlin, 45kg]

I got the last fish - 45kg (99lbs.) (about 20 minute fight).  It was notable because Miki and I traded places at the end so I could take the more manly duties of handlining or spearing.  As soon as Miki got in the fighting chair the fish took off and started jumping.  At one point he got mixed up and swam towards the boat, jumping en route.  He missed jumping into the boat by just 10 feet!  And I got it all on video, but the videos are really long so I need to learn to cut them down..

Time to go get my visa renewed..