Highs & Lows
The highlight of my week was heading down to Osaka for a writers’ workshop. Not only was the workshop useful, entertaining, and fun, I met a ton of interesting new people, made some professional connections, and got to explore a fantastic city. How could the rest of the week not be a comedown?
After last week’s post, I tried to power through a lot of the drudge work that comes before a new semester starts. I also tried to power through a lot of obligations, small and large, externally and self-imposed, and neither effort really paid off. Likewise, the Monday and Tuesday after the weekend have been largely directionless, full of procrastination and ennui. Neither set of weekdays would be all that remarkable were they not bookending a great weekend.
So let’s talk about that.
Osaka is a city built on rivers and, as such, it is a remarkably pedestrian city. Which means that often, the fastest way to get somewhere is simply to walk. So I did. A lot. I’m in the habit of wearing a Fitbit and I normally get 7 to 8 thousand steps a day. Each of the three days I was in Osaka, I got between 25 and 30 thousand. No wonder then that I was tired and borderline injured by the time I got home.
The oddest part of the trip for me, though, was that I made it on my own. For most of the last twenty-years I have travelled with my family; I’m out of practice with traveling by myself. And it turns out to be one of those things I didn’t even know I missed until I did it again. At the same time, I didn’t feel like I was on my own because I was surrounded by people for most of the trip. As I said, I met a lot of people and made a lot of connections. I never had time or space to be lonely, much less alone.
And yet I couldn’t get as many photos as I wanted. Partly, it was time - there just wasn’t enough of it. Partly it was the usual Japan-problem of not wanting to invade someone’s privacy by posting their pictures online without permission. But mostly it was just not having the physical space to maneuver the way I wanted to without bowling someone over.
But I got a few. Now to figure out what to do with them…
Index:
22 March - Red / White - So far, capturing the contrast I can see with my eyes in-camera has been more of a challenge than I had expected. I thought that by getting in closer, remember - zoom with your feet - I’d be able to get a good feel for the spread of colors and textures arriving with the warmer weather. Turns out, the difference in scale is hard to surmount.
23 March - Umbrellas - There’s nothing better than a rainy day. Unless, of course, it’s a rainy day where I actually have somewhere I need to be. Then it sucks. This is yet another safety shot, one I took to make sure I’d have at least one to put into the letter. The fact that I had to use it is not great.
24 March - River- Osaka is a lot of fun. I didn’t have as much time to photograph it as I would have liked, but I did get a lot of shots of this river; the path to my hotel from the subway was literally alongside this river so I spent a fair bit of time walking along it. I can’t say I know Osaka, but I know this one thousand-foot stretch really well.
25 March - River 2 - But, of course the big attraction in Osaka is the other river, which offers boat rides through the downtown area, all lights and noise. It was a lot of fun to walk through, especially as it’s been nearly twenty years since the last time I did so; it was more fun to pop into a bunch of the cafes and bars and sit down.
26 March - Cherry Blossoms - Osaka is far enough south that the cherry blossoms were not only in bloom, but starting to fall and be replaced by green on many of the trees. I don’t think this is that great a shot, but it captures a lot of what I like about Osaka and Japan in general, in one frame - nature, old city, new city, close-up and ever-present.
27 March - Home Again - After three days of constant walking, I managed to injure my foot badly enough that for the first day back home, I couldn’t really walk. So I returned to one of my favorite studies in contrast to see how the seasons are progressing. I can happily report that they are, in fact, progressing.
28 March - Power Lines Again - And although I was able to walk much better on Tuesday I still wasn’t going any further than I needed to and so we return to the power lines. Hey, at least there’s a cherry tree in the shot this time.