Enoshima Beach

The weather today is particularly beautiful. It’s cloudy with the constant spring breeze kissing on your cheeks, as if it whisper its last goodbyes. Summer is definitely in the corner, and with it comes surfing and beach life. I don’t particularly surf, so I think I will just to hang out in the beach, maybe watch the beautiful babes in their swimwear and photograph the sunsets.

Last Sunday’s weather was no different when we went to Enoshima, a beach town situated about 40 minutes away from Yokohama, about 2 hours from the heart of Tokyo, and about 1 hour and 30 minutes away from my home, because I live near Kawasaki. Enoshima is a paradise, it is very close to Tokyo so a lot of people go there during the weekends, especially now that the weather is getting hotter.

My good friend John cordially invited us for a photowalk and he was kind enough to guide us all around the place.

Our cameras at hand, we photographed a lot of stuff. This old train with its railway that runs through the public road itself. This cool “dried fish” store with a “cool” dried fish hanging by its window. This cool woman riding a scooter with 2 dogs riding with her, just sitting there in the front.

Enoshima is also popular for its delicacy called “shirasu”, young sardines either fried or eaten raw, also used as rice toppings or in a sandwich. We all got the fried one on top of the rice.

The aura in the air feels light, and people are just trying to relax and have a good time. We had a good time. We didn’t swim but I will definitely come back and chill out more in this beautiful, cool part of my world.

Here are the rest of the photos.

Ashikaga Flower Park at Tochigi-ken

A lot of International Organizations organize bus trips to popular places. This was was one of them, 2 buses at 5000 Yen per pax, with food and drinks plus an on board karaoke. It was indeed exciting but what excited me most was the site and the flowers that was waiting to be photographed.

Ashikaga Flower Park is a very large park with hundreds of different flower species, but it is well known for the "wisteria". Its called "fuji" in Japanese and it blooms like grapes falling from a vine. Available in different colors, this one is the main attraction.

We met at Shibuya at left an hour and 30 minutes late from schedule. Note taken, if we are to organize something like it, we will leave behind late guests. 30 minutes is the maximum waiting time allowed. My god, an hour and a half of waiting for 1 person, it is ridiculous.

I know from then on that it will be a bad day. Weather forecast said a it would be a fine day of 27 degrees but we never expected 31 degrees. It was too hot that it was almost shocking. We were just 2 weeks into spring and yet this temperature. OMG! Even the ice creams melt in seconds. Regardless of the heat, we went on to reclaim that we should enjoy the trip. Shooting mostly portraits, because we cannot concentrate on macros and close up shots for you cannot stay long in the open.

The other half of the trip was suppose to be "Strawberry Picking". It wasn't, the strawberries were small, most ripe and big ones were obviously gone from a series of trips done a week before. It was not even worth it. Too hot inside the greenhouse and that was just it. I thought that the whole trip was 1 or 2 weeks late. We could have done it during the "Golden Week", but I guess we learned our lesson. I said, next time, we go on our own, take the car and just drive. Most of the other guests inside the bus were too noisy anyway, you can't sleep or sing with them because they will rob you of your song. Organizing such events are not easy but I thought I can do better.

But nevertheless, here are the rest of the photos. The only thing that were giving us spirits was the chance to try my wife's new 50D.

April 12, 2009, Akebonoyama Tulip Festival and Odaiba Photoshoot

Today is is April 19, 2009, and like last week, I didn't sleep much. It is already 5AM here and I am still wide awake. I thought, I should start blogging about our trip to Chiba last week.

Last Sunday was a beautiful day. We started it by getting up at 6AM because we need to be at Kawasaki by 8AM to meet Crispee (Ben), Mamimo (Neri) and Wired (Rance) - they are members of the Timog Forum. This Forum is the chatting and meeting place of Filipino photographers here in Japan. Ben has a car and we are to hitch a ride from there. By the way, it was also our first time to meet, except Rance because I know him already way back from the Airsoft stuff.

We arrived at Chiba at around 920AM and many people are already there, the car park is already 90% full.

My wife's eye widened the moment we reach the Tulips. They are just beautiful. We haven't seen something like this it before.

It was our first collaboration with some of the TF Photographers, so we just follow their lead. Mr. Ben (The Roadrunner) gave me a lot of important pointers about photography and I was thankful. We met up with Sonny (Sarpon) and his officemate Jeff. It was cloudy in the first half of the day but the sun came out later after we had that beautiful lunch. Mr. Ben's wife prepared everything until the last detail. We even have garbage bags and toothpicks. Thanks a lot maam.

We went on to shoot 2-3 more hours before we decided to leave for Odaiba. It is on our way home and with that beautiful day, it was expected to be a beautiful sunset. We rushed out of Chiba and we barely made it. Took some neat sunset shots and moved on to the fashion poses. We don't have models with us, so we took turns on posing. My wife Josephine (Tata) got most of the play time. It was her first time but she enjoyed it so much.

Later that day, we still have to run to a birthday party, and about 1AM the next day we finally arrived home, exhausted. I thought I should go to bed straight but stayed for an extra few hours in front of my PC looking at the shots we took.