_valerian

My Daily Visits

life without dad
vudeja
easterwood
aya
desirsar
just-add-L
penny-arcade
blacktable
ghartman
pictures from outer space

I Stop by Often, or Sometimes

the onion
cameraquest
photo.net
realultimatepower
maddox
justin
aya’s photos
magnum
ottoson
thehutt
kenshukan
seanbaby
squarerootof
chromatic-aberrations
myprivatetokyo
photoethnography
masamania
jake semm
westwrite

anything else? let me know.

Today as I stepped out of my house I was suprised to see a real live marathon going right past my front door.

Only one more day of vacation! Will this winter break ever end? For the first time in my life I am working at a job that I would rather be doing than not doing. The vacation (or “holiday” for you subjects of the queen) started on the 28th and will finally end at 8:30am Tuesday morning. We could be going back to school tomorrow if it was not for Adult Day being a National Holiday.

My views on our time off would have been different had I had all the tools needed to complete my darkroom. The frusteration is there, I can assure you. At least I have an enlarger though. And come next payday, I will have everything ready to begin printing from the 225 rolls of film that I have shot and developed since arriving in August. I decided to go with 8×10 workprints for now. Finally getting all my film developed was something that did take a few days of vacation to complete. I am forever thankful for finding that old 5-reel film developing tank in the high school photo club darkroom. My high score was 30 rolls developed in one day, which kind of wore me out. But now I have kevin’s old PS2 and this helps smooth things along while wating for the film to fix or while it is in the wash.

yesterday I was offered this nice cup of tea. I was glad for the offer but I am not so good with hot drinks– I have a 猫舌 (cat tounge) in Japanese. Apparently, like a me, cats can’t handle hot liquid beverages either. This probably stems from a bad experience with hot chocolate from a an automatic despenser in college. I don’t like tea (hot or cold) or coffee (hot or cold)… and I have never even tried any sort of alcohol either. This makes for some awkward moments when older folks in Japan offer me just about any kind of drink. I handle the school drinking parties by raising my given glass of beer at the toast and then keep it full the whole night through while sipping orange juice. I’m not mormon but I guess I somewhat support them through my daily cans of coca cola.

Thank you Mr. Chiba for the enlarger. I will take care of it.

I priced darkroom gear last week at Yodobashi Camera. Now that I have aquired an enlarger the most expensive part in my quest for a personal darkroom is complete. Now I need-
Tongs, 4 Trays (big enough for 11×14 paper), a safelight (3000 yen), an enlarger light bulb and a lens (400 yen, 10,000 yen), a squeegee and a glass plate, and finally, a paper easel. The one I want is 20,000 yen. Ouch.. but it will be worth it. It lets you print square in the middle of a sheet of paper and that is worth it for me.
I guess I also need a timer– but they don’t have the kind I want at yodobashi-
they only sell this type with all those dials. I want one of those old-style ones that you physically have to move the clock hands on to adjust your exposure time.

Yodabashi does sell a black and white darkroom kit- but it has a crappy enlarger that can only handle 35mm film and the trays it comes with are for 8×10 paper.. plus I already have most of what it comes with.. not a bad deal though.

On a completely unrelated note, Kevin and Makiko make a cute Kyoto Geisha Couple. I’ll let you try and figure out who is who.

Kevin has now finally realized his fantasy- a chance to be with a geisha, and um.. I guess, getting to actually be a geisha.