When in Roam
A week into the series and patterns are starting to emerge. I’ve found a few areas I want to walk through some more and I’m going to have to overcome a little bit of social anxiety to do so.
I had decided early on that I didn’t want to do another series in the same spots that I did during summer 20221. Instead, I wanted to broaden my horizons by making use of my car to get me places that I would then walk around. What this means in practical terms is that I’m making it a point to take a lot of the little side roads and stop offs along my normal commuting paths. This allows me to stay within the same broad themes as the last series2 of 91 days while still branching out and finding new topics.
While I’m not sure exactly what those new themes or topics will end up being, I suspect and hope that they will relate to change. To put things into practical terms again, this means that I want to take pictures of the same things over the course of the next three months to show how the environment changes during this time of the year. Maybe not the most original of ideas, but one I enjoy and wanted to play with.
Which brings me to the hard part of the exercise.
Whenever I walk around in the rice fields or farmed areas in the area where I live, I always carry a fear around with me that someone is going to take exception to the large, scary-looking foreigner and call the police on me. And yet, in the twenty-some odd years of living here and doing this kind of thing, I have never once had anyone do so.
Instead, I have been given impromptu history lessons, Japanese lessons, green tea, chocolate, and, on one really awkward occasion, the phone number of the elderly farmer’s granddaughter because the granddaughter wanted a foreign boyfriend. So, as you can see, my fear is, so far, unfounded.
But because I’m me, with a brain that sees calamity in every passing shadow, I tend to prepare for the worst. So, I take a tripod and, when possible, my dog. Generally speaking, a tripod has the same effect as a clipboard and a high-viz vest - people assume you’re meant to be there, doing what you’re doing. And having a dog with you immediately establishes you as someone local, rather than a lost tourist.
But if I want to really develop a good series of photos, with or without a theme, I’m going to have to talk to people and that, well, that’s the biggest challenge yet.
Index:
1 March - Starting Out - I found this tree out in the middle of nowhere, which, for the area I live in, is about thirty feet away from a major road. The tree is obviously still leafless, but I wanted this for the first picture because I think it’ll be a good way to show how quickly things change. In other words, you’ll see this tree again, soon.
2 March - Tracks - Speaking of things you’ll see again during this series, I found this very isolated train crossing a few miles off the beaten path. I think I’m going to end up coming back to this area just because there are so many interesting vistas. Anyway, I feel like this is the standout shot for this week.
3 March - Benched - But, after a couple days of driving around, I decided to see what my favorite parks were up to. This bench sits on an overlook with a view of the river and is one of my favorite spots to chill out.
4 March - Beware the Trees - Meanwhile, down in one of my other favorite parks, a storm and a tree disease had done a couple of large trees in. The yellow tape around the trunks are standard police tape, written in Japanese, Korean, and English.
5 March - New Road - Now that the ground is thawing, there is a ton of development going on. Here, a new street is being built for a new housing development. I always feel like a little kid gawking at all the diggers and earth movers, but it really is fascinating to see it all come together.
6 March - Work Bench - I’m not really back at work too much yet, just for meetings and gossip really. Still, since I had to be on campus, I thought it was worth stopping by my coffee bench to see how the winter had treated it. As you can see, not great.
7 March - Guard Dog - Finally, this photo encapsulates what I really want to do with this series; I’ve driven by this shrine at least a thousand times and never once made the decision to stop in. I finally changed that and got this photo of one of the guardian lion-dogs (called Koma Inu in Japanese) and the sacred tree. Expect more photos of this shrine, too.
Not yet anyway.
Power lines, dragonflies, and trains, oh my!