_valerian

My birthday is May 3rd, 1979.
According to this, I have been alive 10,000 days today. It did not feel like an actual birthday, but for some reason I can’t shake the feeling that this kind of thing makes as much sense to mention as it would the annual recognition of one’s birth. A birthday just says you were born and counts years but the concept of “days” is frighteningly more precise. I did not think Deep Thoughts about all that has happened during the 10-grand’s worth of rotations of the earth that I have been here for. But I did finish a great book that I started last night- ” the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” by Mark Haddon.

Saturday (#9,999) I harvested rice by hand (稲刈り) in a paddy near Narita Airport with 160 junior high school students and the 53 serrated knives between them all. Coming home after that I was dusty and sweaty (but not bloody!) and figured that it was as good of a time as any to clean out the weeds in my backyard. Here is a picture of the result:

I killed a lot of plants yesterday.

The Difference Between

The October 2006 issue of Japan Photo Contest Monthly features 6 photos from the portfolio “The Difference Between”. On sale September 20th. The text is as follows:

I photograph to try to understand how reality is transformed through photography.
This is an investigation concerning what is around me, and how that documentation of Japan in turn affects my conception of this country.
I often wonder, what is it that is between myself and this country, besides my camera?
Rather than answers I am interested in the questions that these photographs ask.

The profile shot was done at the request of the editor who worked with me, and I find enjoyment in trying to look serious (enough) with a bath towel hung up over the bathroom door to separate the brown of the door from the brown of my hair in a 1 inch tall black and white picture. It honestly took several tries to get the shape of my head boxed in by the door just right. The fusebox for my apartment adds to the reality and mystery.

a larger size of the last one, my favorite: