Photo 3: 1997, Nagoya, Japan

I took several of my favorite photos of Japan in 1997 and couldn't choose only one to post, so I thought I would tell the stories behind each of these. I was just starting to experiment with black and white photography in '96-'97 and these were some of those early efforts.

I had some good luck taking pictures of average people in average scenes with a 70-300 mm zoom lens, and these first two are a couple of those shots. I went to Nagoya Station on my day off (in those days I was teaching on a Tuesday-Saturday schedule, so this was a Monday evening), sat on the floor during rush hour, and snapped away. I caught this salaryman, headed who knows where, on a cell phone. This shot captured for me the pace of life of the average company worker in big city Japan.

The next shot is one of my absolute favorite people shots. Again, sitting on the floor at Nagoya Station, this group of high school students happened by, and I got this shot. In the late 1990's, high school girls were more and more on the leading edge of trends in fashion, technology, etc. and the coolest of the cool had begun to take on a sort of detached, disaffected attitude that I think comes across in this photo. Where the salaryman above seemed to have noticed me, and maybe wondered what I was doing and why I was taking his picture, these girls seem to be looking right through me to something far more interesting.

While the rest of Japan was dealing with the post-bubble economic malaise that has now lasted 15 years, high school students were taking advantage of a degree of economic and cultural power to cement themselves in a place of influence in Japanese society that remains today. One would like to think that this power had something to do with a sense of youthful optimism that young people in Japan maintained while their parents watched Japan's position as a world economic power erode. It would be interesting to see where these students are today and whether they have maintained their devil-may-care attitude, or whether they have softened somewhat.

Photo 2: 1996 (Gifu City, Gifu Prefecture):



Now, there is a photo. Somehow, I thought that this was such an interesting picture for the 2nd in this series. There are so many details in this photo that bring back memories.


1st, the photo is of me and Tomo Imai, the magician/bartender at Milimeter, a little bar in Gifu where you used to be able to get what I thought was the best bloody mary in rural Japan: tomato juice, vodka, lemon juice, worcestershire, horeseradish, tabasco, and celery seed. Yummy, yummy, yummy. His bar was a revelation in the back alleys of Gifu, a place where Japanese and foreigners alike could get together for a good time to wile away the hours drinking, listening to jazz, and playing cards. I've been to a very few places where I felt so comfortable. Tomo went out of business in early 1999 right before I moved from Gifu to Kochi and while the last time I was in Gifu the light over Milimeter was on, I ended up not going in. If it had been someone else running a bar of the same name in the same spot, I could only have been disappointed. Of course, if Tomo is back behind the bar there, it's simply the one place in Gifu you have to go.


Now, I was only going to put one photo in this post, but all this talk of milimeter has me remembering this one great photo of my dad and I that was taken there, so I am going to post it as well. Here we are at Milimeter on January 4, 1997 on my parents' first trip to Japan. Somehow or other, I got half cut off on this shot, but it still should give you just a taste of what this great bar was like.

Now that I am back in the U.S., I have to say that the one thing I miss most about Japan is the local bar. The place you can go and just have a quiet drink, talk to the master, and listen to some music. Perhaps they exist in the U.S. and I am just in the wrong town and too busy with my studies to find them. Or, maybe, my idea of such a place is tainted by the memories of all the 10 seat bars I spent time in over in Japan. Either way, these photos bring back great memories of Milimeter, Tomo, and my friends Brad, Kathleen, Sarah, Maki, and Jodie. Maybe one of them will read this and remember what great times we had.

Photo 1: 1995 (Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture, Japan)



I arrived in Nagoya, Japan for teacher training at AEON (one of the "Big 4" English Conversation School companies in Japan) on January 7, 1995, 10 days before the Great Hanshin Earthquake (阪神大震災). It seems so long ago, but I remember that week of training pretty vividly, especially a couple of nights eating out at a little Yakitori (grilled chicken bits on sticks) dive that was under the railroad tracks at Tsurumai Station. That was really my first "wow" experience in Japan.

I moved from Nagoya up to Takaoka, along the sea of Japan coast, a week later and it turned out that the big Kobe earthquake happened the morning of my first day of work. We shook in Toyama, but as it was my first earthquake I had nothing to judge against in terms of deciding whether it was a nearby quake, a small or big one, or an aftershock of something that had happened before I arrived. It was pretty shocking to wake up the next morning and see scenes of Kobe on fire (of course, I couldn't read or understand Japanese, so watching TV the fires could have been right outside my window for all I knew...!)

In any event, this photo was taken months later at a party we had at my colleague and friend Susan's (2nd from right) apartment. My students Hiroki (1st on L), Fumi (3rd on L), and Kaoru (1st on R), and Fumi's younger sister Junko (2nd from L in Kimono) were there, as was my friend Dan, who took the picture. Junko had been to have a formal picture taken prior to her "coming of age ceremony" (成人式), which was to be held the following January, hence the Kimono.

Hiroki got married in 1997, or so, and now has two children. Fumi got married in 2005 and she and her husband have recently moved into a new house in Toyama. Susan got married in 2004, I think I heard from Dan (who got married in 2004 as well, if memory serves, and now has a son). While I have no idea what happened to Kaoru, I do know that Junko got married and moved to Tokyo and recently nearly died due to an illness.

Looking at that photo, you'd never know it about any of us, of course.

Next time, a memory of 1996, the year I turned 25.