Welcome to issue 45 of your completely random look at Japan, Random Japan.
Today, odd Japanese building names, some drainspotting, and trying the rolling shutter technique with people.
Let’s get started. It’s time to jump into…
Random Japan
This is a very odd name. “Lotus” is English, “Aoi” is Japanese, and then we have the roman numeral II, which wouldn’t be so strange in the West, but in Japan few people know much of anything about the system, making it’s usage a bit odd. To top off the strangeness, the name is written in romaji—roman letters—instead of katakana, the angular Japanese script that would normally be used for this kind of thing.
The thing is, except for the usage of romaji, this kind of bizarre naming is fairly normal for buildings in Japan, especially for apartment buildings.
Another manhole cover! Yes, and once again it features Okazaki Castle.
(psst—look here for the first manhole cover I looked at).
This time the main feature of the design is the Yahagi Bridge. Why is this important? Briefly: back in the day, Kyoto and Tokyo—then known as Edo—were the most important cities in Japan. The puppet ruler of Japan, the Emperor, lived in Kyoto and the real ruler of Japan, the Shogun, lived in Edo. These two cities were connected by the then and now famous Tokaido Highway. Travel in those days wasn’t as safe or easy as now, so there were many stations set up along the road. One of these stations was right next to Yahagi Bridge, making this a somewhat famous landmark for the area..
(see a very famous ukiyoe print showing what it looked like back then)
One of these days I will do a write-up solely about the Rolling Shutter Technique. I’ve posted several photos in the past that make use of it. It can make some great images, as you have seen if you’ve been following me on Steemit.
One thing about the technique, though, is that it requires a lot of light to work. On older iPhones (and newer ones unless special apps are used) you have no control over the camera settings so unless it is very bright the phone automatically chooses a too slow shutter speed for the shot. Which, as you see here, results in a much less clean shot with more blur than bending. Yet… I kind of like it. It has a certain toy camera look and feel.
That’s all, folks. If you enjoyed anything here be sure to come back tomorrow for another Random Japan.
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Index Posts
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David LaSpina is an American photographer lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time. |