As the sun quickly faded from the sky I found myself gazing down upon Tokyo from 55 stories up.  It is mind boggling how Tokyo spreads from horizon to horizon.  The blinking red lights warning low flying aircraft hypnotized me.

Masses of concrete and steel reaching ever higher and higher.  One day will they all crumble onto themselves?

The wind whipped my face as we continued to look out over Babylon.  It all of its beautiful glitzy horror, I couldn’t turn away.

All of these life stories stacked one on top of another.  Marginalized, segmented, separate yet utterly together.

Tokyo is the land where I have pitched my tent.  I am the stranger in a strange land.

The rain came.  The rain left.  The cold returned, the wind stayed. The hum of the street lamp glowed in the darkness, as the skies above turned a darker shade of purple.

The neighborhood was quiet, my neighbors gathered around the kotatsu, and the youngest ones laid their heads on small pillows.  I made my way down the glistening streets, looking up at that purple tinged sky.

All just another autumn day in Kasai, my hood.

Even the most benign of neighborhoods can transform themselves when the sun sets.  Blades of glass take on a life of their own.  The artificial lights only imitates the sun, it does not replace it.  The shadows dance and sway in the late summer nights.

Just another Ogikubo park night.

o

Snow has finally come to Tokyo.  The rest of Japan has been hit with record amounts of snow this year.  So metropolitan Tokyo ha caught up to the rest of the country.

I took a a short walk at about 10pm just to see what old Minami Kasai was looking like with a fresh dusting of snow.  Being from Miami, it always seems like magic to see white powder falling from the sky.  And again being from Miami, it is NOT that powder, but the one you can make snowballs out of.

The crazy thing is about this snow is that there has been thunder and lighting.  I have never seen that before.  But maybe my people in the midwest can help me out here.

I am looking forward to taking a stroll in the early morning to see what there is to be seen.  And to get the once or twice a year I get to put on my snow boots.

Goodnight from the white night.

I was so excited that I was going to be able to view the full lunar eclipse in Japan.  No the best of my knowledge I had never seen one before, and I was determined to stay awake and alert.  I pretty much knew going into this life time experience that my camera gear was not going to be up to the task of getting those beautiful, clear, images of the moon.  I decided anyway to go ahead and try to see what I can see with both my naked eye and my lens.

I got out my Canon 5D with a sweet 100mm lens and a crappy 300mm zoom lens and my Ricoh GRIV.  I didn’t really expect to get much with these cameras.  It was crazy cold out and I set up my tripod on my patio and took a couple of test sots around 8 p.m. Tokyo time, about 90 minutes for the beginning of the lunar eclipse and about 3 hours from the peak of the red hued moon.  The tests did not come out so well, but I forged ahead.

I jumped in and out onto my patio on and off for the next 4 hours or so.  Looking up into the heavens was beautiful.  I was able to bear witness to an event for the first time in my life.  I will never forget looking up into the skies that cleared up around 11 p.m. and watch the shadow fall across the moon.  The stars and other heavenly bodies are reminders of another ancient way of keeping time.  The moon is not to be worshiped but it is there as an heavenly guide to the times and the seasons.  I thought back to our ancestors that looked to the heavens in accordance to set their calendars and planting, and reaping of their crops.  I became part of this long line of sky watchers.

I hit the sack at about 1 a.m.  Got up the next morning with circles on my mind so I made my wife and I pancakes for breakfast. I started to go through and edit the images from the night before and so many were just blah!  I kept flipping through them until I found that best expressed both my experience and the pushing of my equipment to match that vision.

These three images are a result of that.  I had to use what I have to the best of my ability.  I am sure there were some brilliant images taken last night.  These are not those images.  These images are the best that I could do. The memories of spending the night out on my patio with my wife in the cold winter air will last a life time.

I just love these concrete boxes.  I think they hide water pumping machinery.  This one is a long exposure from FIU’s campus.

I had gathered my coat, scarf, and bag before stumbling out into the cold Chiba night.  It was only 6:30 but the haze of the early party swirled in my head.  The air felt so refreshing after inhaling other peoples smoke for the last 2 hours.  I walked the familiar streets back to the station, pausing a few times to see some lights that caught my eye.

The lights just come alive at night.  Even though at times so much light pours onto the streets that becomes a artificial fluorescent day.

I kind of like it a bit when the darkness comes so early, but I look forward to those long summer days that aren’t to far away.

This is not the glossy image of Shibuya that is splashed across glossy magazines.  This is the Shibuya that I know.  The dirty backstreets, where one can get lost in the variety of vices offered up if you have the yen to pay for it.

Around 1 o’clock in the morning I hard an unstoppable urge to go out on to my patio and look up at the night sky.  I wanted to look up into the dark skies and mediate on all those who are also looking up at the velvet skies.  How many of us are out there looking into the heavens.  Are these the same skies that my ancestors saw why traveling the deserts?

Go out and look up.  Think about the countless humans who have also looked up into these seemingly changeless skies.

Look, Seek, Search and Find

Made a pilgrimage to the Ethiopian joint Queen Sheeba.  I hadn’t been there for a long time, something like a god 15 years.  The air was a bit cooler than usual, and I was able to get a couple of nice long exposures on the backstreets away from the station.  Quiet, dark, evening…

We wanted to go to one of my favorite Nepali spots in Chiba on Sunday, little did we know that there was a summer festival happening in the city of Ichikawa.  So, we were pleasantly surprised to be able to walk around the food stalls after we filled up on curries and momos.

I really dig the way the food booths just glow at night.  They take on this surreal ethereal quality.  The banners are aglow with colors that only appear in the twilight hours.

I look forward to hitting up and exploring more festivals as the summer heats up.

I love that pause that starts Friday night.  The time to recoup my strength.  A chance to restore my mental and physical energies.  I time to reflect on the week, and plan the week to come.

I give thanks that I made it to another Friday night.  A lovely ritual of home cooked food, a glass of wine, the warm glow of candles, and the company of my wife.  It is a beautiful ritual.

All stay upfull and blessed!!

After a nice day of rest I ventured around my local station to get some food, and grab some shots.  The night life was just beginning.

The colors are so saturated, and lively.  The beer was ice cold.  The air conditioners are cranked to high.  Just another night in Kasai.

The rain came all day.  It lest a haze that was hung around after the rain vanished.  All the lights are aglow outside, flaking of the shiny pavements and sidings.  SNAP, Snap, snap.

Sometimes if feels that I am standing on the edge of a mist that shrouds everything in mystery.  I do not know where to step, and where that step will lead me.  However, this is no reason to fret.  Take a deep breath and let the spirit wind of the most high enter into your consciousness.  Do not be afraid.  Your lost roots can be rediscovered.  The present is where you stand at any given point in time, and the future, no one knows.

step, Step, STEP

trod, Trod, TROD

soon come