Kansai Scene 10th Anniversary Party

As previously mentioned, last night was Kansai Scene's 10th Anniversary party at Sam & Dave Umeda. The punters were hot, the special guests were burning, and the prizes were off the scale. DJ Jules warmed the crowd that wasn't used to such an early call for a Friday night (doors opened at 8pm). Later, MC Woody came out to introduce Crazy for The Mambo, and 8-piece latin influenced band, whose playlist went from straight-up mambo to Michael Jackson and Queen, all latin style.

Next were the sensual moves of Arthur Murray's dance school proteges, who dazzled the onlookers. Their performance brought the room near the boiling point for the rest of the evening, which included fantastic prizes by the aforementioned dance school, the Ramada Inn Osaka, and Malaysian Airlines. Games determined the winners, with Woody and special guest MC Diane Orrett providing the entertainment. Malaysian Airlines gave some consolation prizes, as well as the main draw, a trip to and a 3-night stay in red-hot Bangkok (hopefully the ticket is sort of open ended)!

After a mama-cherry (old woman's bicycle, the most common type of bikes around) was awarded, the regular Sam & Dave DJ came on the decks, to the joy of the crowd of regulars. The Kansai Scene folks stayed around, Diane continued to do balloon hats for friends and strangers, and we had a few drinks together, talking about this and that. We both realized that we were sitting on a chair at this club for the first time ever, and she's been in Kansai for more than twice the time that I have!

All in all, it was a great evening, and you can see some of the pictures here, which again contain some coloured flash shots.

Neighbour's House

The house in front of my apartment is currently being demolished; I can actually hear the machines as I write this. As older denizens move into senior homes and as younger people prefer to live in prefabricated houses, old building get demolished on a daily basis in Japan. Their decisions are understandable as who, save for romantic nostalgics, would like to live in poorly insulated homes in chilly winters and suffocating summers. However, it is sad to see them being torn down, as often they are replaced by characterless apartment buildings with no garden to suck some of the humidity in summer.

One of the advantages of being a shutterbug is that when we wake early and can't fall asleep, we can always just grab our gear and head out the door to indulge in our passion. And that is exactly what I did this morning. I figured that this early, no one would be on the demolition site and I could take some shot. Just as I had taken what I planned would be my last shot (although you never know!), one of the construction workers arrived and was a little startled by my presence. He asked me what I was doing, told him I was taking pictures and told him I was done, and that was it! I was surprised he didn't make an issue of it, but he truly seemed unconcerned. Great of him to think so, considering all the people full of themselves who will grab any opportunity to assert whatever authority they think they may have.

I leave you with what I feel are the six best shots out of the 41 I took. If I manage to wake early tomorrow morning, I'll try to go again. But don't count on it, tonight is the Kansai Scene 10th anniversary at Sam & Dave, and I'm the official photographer: of course I'll assert my rights and 'you will respect my authoritah'!

My Mom's Trip to Japan

I've uploaded some of the pictures of my mom's trip to Japan a few weeks ago. I limited to a very arbitrary 34 pictures. Don't ask me why, you'd be disappointed with the answer. I think it shows the good variety of things we did while she was here. Check out the Yossy Little Noise Weaver gallery too, as she attended and enjoyed the gig.

Kansai Scene Article

The article for which I took pictures of Diane Orrett got published this month. Only yesterday did I get my hands on a copy, though. They chose my favorite as the main picture, and I like the second one as well, although looking at it again, I might have overdone the half-gold, half-silver reflector. Anyways, still stoked to have my pictures for the feature article of the magazine. You can probably find some copies in Kansai's finest drinking establishments, as well as in some bookstores and galleries.

Chilling

My photojournalism instructor, Jack Picone, lives in Bangkok these days, and of course he covered the recent events that rocked the Thai capital. He wrote a chilling piece about his coverage, sitting next to an army sniping unit. Read it, this is real, not the censored stuff we get on regular mainstream media.

New Photo Project

Pirates of the Dotombori @ Fubar, 10-05-02

If you remember, my mom and I went to the Pirates of the Dotombori (you can also check them out on Facehook) show at Fubar about 2 weeks ago, and I finally had the time to upload the shots. You can see them here. Aaaaarrrrhhh!!!!

Yossy Little Noise Weaver @ Noon, 10-04-29

As previously mentioned, I shot the Yossy Little Noise Weaver gig at the end of last month, and I just had the chance to review and edit the shots, and finally upload them. You can check out the gallery here for now, but Yossy might require to make the gallery private, so hurry up if you're interested.

Back Home

I came back late last night from my trip to Kanto with my mom. I don't know if it's because it was nice to be with her, but I did not shoot as much as I had anticipated. But I focused on creating good images instead of just firing away. I just started going through the shots, and here's one I knew I would love. I think it's a good teaser. The light is all natural, some post production to remove a distracting patch of color and to clean two Jizo heads.

Mom's First Day

Mom arrived on Wednesday evening, and Thursday, we went to Fushimi Inari Grand Shrine in Kyoto, had dinner at a yakitori (grilled chicken) restaurant, before going to a Yossy Little Noise Weaver concert (CD launch for the excellent Volcano album.

Here at he pictures, if they upload this time...