Tag Archives: Japan

Spa Day

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It’s Friday again, I know, how could that happen, it was just Monday a minute ago but it is. And as you know this is the day we give you ideas on what to do over the weekend. This weekend we thought we might offer something a little different. Last weekends suggestion of jetting off to Cape Disappoint on the Washington coast in your private jet was a big hit with some of you. Actually very few of you but the ones who went said it was great.

This weekend we decided to scale it down a bit and offer something for the ladies out there. That’s a big fat Spa day! Guys can go along too, but I’d recommend skipping the pedicure session Saturday morning. Ladies and some who aren’t really, like spa days and find it a big treat to go to them and have stuff done to them that they can’t get done in the privacy of their own homes.

So what can you do at a spa and more importantly what can be done to you in a spa, you might ask. Well lucky for you, you’ve come to the right place for answers. Listed below, in no particular order, are spa treatments you can order at your local spa, or if they’re unavailable there, where you can go this weekend to get them.

First is a Snake massage.

Hop over to Israel where you can get a massage from several non-venomous snakes as they slither up and presumably down your spine. Cost $70 US.

Or try your choice of the Tea, Coffee,red wine, sake, or Ramen noodle bath in Japan.

This is one is a little closer to home and I’ll bet to ladies hearts. That’s the chocolate wrap you can get at the spa in Hershey, Pa. They will wrap you or more concisely smear chocolate all over you and they mean all over and then leave you alone for a while. As a guy I have to wonder why they would leave you alone for a while but women do some strange stuff so we’ll just leave it at that.

Gold. In Japan, they give you a gold facial. That’s gold painted on your face for as long as you want it there. The cost, a measly 250 bucks, and I gotta say that if you can afford the plane ticket to Japan and back that’s pretty darn reasonable.

How about a cactus massage? In Mexico you can get rubbed, whacked, stroked or whatever with a spineless cactus paddle and pay for it. The cost $245. It doesn’t say whether that is in peso’s or dollars

And for those of  you with more agrarian roots there is a Wet Hay Wrap in Italy where you get wrapped in wet hay harvested from the meadows of Alpe di Siusi between mid-July and early August then lie on a special 100° waterbed until they harvest you I guess. As a special bonus for those of you who make it you receive a foot treatment where a fish named the Garra Rufa eat away whatever may be lurking on your feet.

I saved the most special treatment for last. That’s the Fanny Facial.  I know it seems like a contradiction in terms but that’s how it’s listed. In New York City, like where else except maybe most of California, can you get a fanny facial? I mean it’s strange even asking the question. What happens is you go in and ask for this deliberately, obviously they don’t just give you one without asking, then they perform a exfoliation of the fanny areas with a papaya-mint scrub, followed by a micro-current therapy where they apparently zap your hiney with low-voltage current to remove in their words, “any lumps or bumps from your butt”, then the whole business is finished with an organic spray tan so your fanny glows like the noon day sun. This has got to be special people. The cost was not revealed but I got to say it has to be worth it.

So those are just some of the treatments available to the Spa goer. Yes they may seem a little irregular to those who don’t frequent spas regularly or that only go to low rent ones where these special treatments aren’t available but our job is to bring you the newest and trendiest things out there, and these were certainly out there.

The ladies pictured above have just completed Yellowstone’s interpretation of a spa which is, as you can see, a snow spa, where you can spend a leisurely hour or two in the sub-zero waters of the Yellowstone river, then be rubbed down by brawny park rangers with snow before finishing the day next to a warm geyser. Upon asking we found that the Fanny Facial is not offered in Yellowstone.

There you have it. That’s the special weekend activities for you ladies. I’m sure you can’t wait to “hit the spa” as they say somewhere I’m sure. For you guys I might remind you that there’s a game on almost every minute of the weekend and beer in the fridge. Just give her the credit card and don’t ask.

Sometimes Simple Is Better

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Portland Japanese garden

As a photographer one of your jobs is to always look for the different view, the unnoticed detail, the obvious seen in a new light. But that isn’t always simple or easy. We get trained and accustomed to seeing the overall picture, the big view and forget that it is the details that add life and meaning to what we’re seeing.

While visiting the Japanese garden in Portland a few weeks ago I found myself after two days of intensive shooting realizing that I had spent most of my time getting the big picture, the wide views of the ponds and paths and trees and the larger scenes the gardener had designed for us to notice as we strolled through the garden, and although they were breathtakingly beautiful I found that I was seeing the garden from a distance, I was missing the details that add character and texture to the garden. I wasn’t as immersed in the experience as I wanted to be.

I needed to go back through and find the small things that made this extraordinary place unique. I needed detail. When you’re visiting a place like a Japanese garden there is so much going on that everything you see is blended together. The overview and the details are blended together in such a way to make the total picture complete, that you don’t focus on the small parts that complete the view, they’re just there. There would be an empty space you would feel more than see if they were gone, that is by design. Yet that is part of the photographers problem, he has to be able to notice those details then isolate them in a meaningful way. That’s where the photographer’s eye comes in.

To do that we have to borrow a phrase from the politicians handbook and use the “KISS” method, or “Keep It Simple, Stupid”. All this means is that as you observe various details that your eye may have glanced over before, you begin to isolate that particular part of the overall view and try and present it in a way that makes it meaningful and interesting at the same time. And the best way to accomplish that is to keep it simple. Remove anything that may distract the viewer from seeing the essence of the detail and let it speak for itself. The resulting picture can often give the viewer an emotional connection to the place that isn’t always in the larger views.

I chose this image of a broom leaning against the wall for several reasons. It is iconic to a Japanese garden, I love the mood it sets up against the wall, and the third is for a more personal reason. When I was in Japan visiting the various temples and gardens there, I would notice the monks sweeping the temple grounds with these brooms. It was usually an older monk or a very young one doing the sweeping. Never a monk in the middle, if you will, I asked one of them about it and was told that they didn’t use a younger man because they did too good of a job. The result was too perfect, there wasn’t the missed leaf laying against the stone to catch your eye and draw it to the beauty of the individual, or the build up of them along the walls and walkways left there by the sweeper as he made his way along the path. The details that we would take in but not see if you will, but made the whole better, more complete. The older monks knew it didn’t matter if they missed a few and the younger ones didn’t know the difference yet. The overall effect completed the harmony.

Seeing that broom against the wall brought back those memories. A simple view but a good one.

Light In The Meadow

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After a mind-clearing journey of over 4000 miles through the Pacific Northwest and Canada I’m back in the Director’s chair here at the Institute. One of the largest conclusions I have come to is that there is an incredible amount of green out there in the Pacific Northwest. Everything is green, from the mighty trees that grow right down to the ocean’s edge to the green eggs and ham I got at a local eatery, it’s green. Many, many shades of green, almost too many if one were forced to make a judgment about it. I like green. Don’t get me wrong, it’s one of my favorite colors, but I had never been inside a green explosion before and it took some getting used to.

The trip was fantastic. The Bokeh Maru seemed to respond to the lighter touch of just one person at the helm instead of the four-hour watch routine we had on our Montana adventure where almost all of the crew took their turns at the wheel. Consequently she performed flawlessly. No hesitation, no refusal to go a where ever I directed her and she seemed to enjoy the new scenery as much as I did. I even began to suspect she may have been there before but being a gentleman I didn’t ask. A lady must have her  secrets.

There were new things to see nearly every minute of the day and it was pure bliss to camp next to the ocean with only a small sand dune separating us from the ability to turn left and head for Japan. The waves were relentless and the sound of the rain on the roof during the night was mesmerizing. As a treat I let the Bokeh Maru wet her wheels in the incoming tide and you could hear her squealing in delight as the salt water washed the remnants of the long road trip from her undercarriage. After we left I watched her closely so that she didn’t surreptitiously try and turn back to the sea.

We traveled through the Columbia gorge, then along the seacoast of Oregon and Washington using the famous highway 101 until we could go no further then loaded on to a car ferry aptly named the USS Scratch and Dump to go to Vancouver Island in Canada. Upon entry I had a chance to visit with the charming and polite customs official who was most interested in whether I had a gun aboard, or owned a gun which might not be aboard, and whether I kept guns in my home here in the USA. An interesting question asked was whether I supported the right to own guns. I answered all the questions as truthfully as I could with, No, No, No, and Hell yes. I t was enough to get me into the sovereign country of Canada but not without some suspicious looks as I slowly eased onto Canadian soil. I was asked about the gun thing by Canadians at several of the campgrounds I stayed in while in Canada. It something that our Canadian friends seemed to be very interested in.

I took a whale watching boat out to see if we could locate Orcas or Killer whales as the more bloodthirsty among us like to call them and we did, plus Humpback whales and a rare white-sided dolphin that had the boat crew all excited. Apparently seeing one of them was akin to seeing a white buffalo here.

I also took the opportunity of making a surprise visit to the new managers of the eastern Oregon satellite office of the Institute. Things are progressing somewhat slowly there as far as the remodeling and refurbishment of the old site goes, but I was assured that as soon as Spring hit they would begin the transformation in earnest. Meanwhile I was fed and watered as one of the family and soon forgot why I had even stopped there in the first place. I even had to stay a second day after the promise of a meal of free-range, fresh cooked fish, Steelhead or it might have been Halibut, that had been swimming freely in the river moments before. I even tried the old trick of feinting extreme malnutrition by sucking my cheeks in and holding a pillow in front of my less than svelte stomach, hoping to get more food the next day but although my new management team lives in a backwater of the Wallowa valley they are smart enough to quickly catch on to my ruse and went out for cigarettes and didn’t return until they saw the end of the Bokeh Maru turn on to the highway. Disappointed but impressed with their ability to spot a flim-flam man I headed back towards Colorado.

We, The Bokeh Maru and I, had been out for nearly three weeks and it was time to get back to work. Before that work could commence however I had to change the color palette in my head from the greens and greys of the Northwest and replace it with the local one so that I was reoriented again. That a meant a quick trip up to Rocky Mountain National Park to firmly plant the yellows and reds and gold that was the aspens and meadows of Fall back in the front of my mind.

The image above is the late afternoon sun streaming through the aspen grove at the edge of Moraine meadow. It was enough to get my mind right again. As time goes by I will be posting images from the trip to the Northwest with the usual accompanying stories that a few of you find interesting. The rest of you that simply look at the pictures then go do something interesting will also not be forgotten as I try and post something to stimulate your attention span. It’s good to be back.

A quick note. As this is a busy time of year for me with the fall color change and the rut happening I will be not be posting every day until I’m home and winter has me locked in. So although I will try my best to get posts out there I will be gone several more times as I try and get the photography done while the opportunity presents itself. Thanks to all of you who patiently put up with my inconsistencies. I will make sure all of  you get entered in my will.

Time Travel: Japan 51 Years Ago

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Time Travel Shellfish Lady

Back then I was a young man wandering around Japan with my camera trying to absorb every shade and nuance of this exotic culture I had been thrust into. I was in the service, the Navy as a hospital corpsmen and occasionally was sent to Japan on both business and pleasure. Pleasure was always better.

Not speaking anything more than pidgin Japanese and a lot of that not fit for mixed company I used my camera to communicate as best I could. Most of the time the people took my picture-taking as a sign of friendliness and would willing pose for me, like this Shellfish Lady. The times they didn’t it was best to put the camera down and buy some shellfish, even if I gave it away later.

Back then in 1963 it was only 18 years after the end of WWII, although in my youth I didn’t put that fact together then. It is also why the majority of the people still wore the same style clothes as before the war and once you were away from Tokyo still lived very much as they had for generations. I just took everything in as a new exotic place that had been just created entirely for my benefit. It was also the beginning of a lifetime love affair with Japan.

This is image is a scanned version from the original slide taken back then. The slides and the people involved are aging and it’s time to share the experiences. Plus it just feels good to time travel. Long forgotten memories of that time are brought forward to be experienced again and again and reliving the past, during the good times at least, feels good from the comfort of my easy chair. My tea is getting cold so I must go and make some new. Let’s talk again later.

When I was Just a Young Boy

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Japan022click to enlarge

I was just a young boy My fortune yet untold
I have wandered thru the distance
with a camera full of miracles,
Such are promises
All sights are truth
Yet a man sees what he wants to see
And disregards the rest.

When I left my home and my family
I was no more than a boy
In the company of killers
In the middle of the induction center,
Being scared,
Saying so,
Seeking out the safer notions
Where I could safely go
Looking for the places
That I would surely know

Lie-la-lie…..

My apologies and thanks to Paul Simon and the lyrics from the Boxer

As you age things occasionally pop into your head in the form of memories, things from the past that are so vivid and real that they could have happened this morning. This one didn’t however, it happened 51 years ago and whenever I revisit this image Paul Simon’s song “The Boxer” accompanies it and the first phrase that I hear is “When I was just a young boy, my fortune yet untold” plays. I know that my version is incorrect and differs from the original but that’s the way I hear it.

It is almost impossible for me to realize that I was only 18 at the time and had already been in the service for a year. I was stationed on the South Pacific island of Guam in the Trust Territories of the United States and had already used up every new experience that place had to offer. Consequently whenever I had the opportunity I would hop a plane and go to Japan. It is difficult to explain the impact that incredible place had on an impressionable young man but I still feel the exotic-ness of those memories over 50 years later. I judge every new experience I have against those memories in fact. At every available opportunity I wandered through their country like it was another dimension, camera in hand, trying to capture what I was seeing and feeling at the time and failing miserably but loving every second of it.

I remember taking what seemed like thousands of pictures but as I search through my files I find only a pitifully few of them, faded pockmarked Kodachromes, colors becoming transparent, fading like my memory, but what treasures they are. I have pictures of open air markets on the docks with the sea smell and raw fish and the sound of a language that was both harsh and wondrous and magical at the same time.

I have pictures of movie posters that featured the latest Japanese productions of Ninja movies that I never missed on a Saturday afternoon with the locals yelling insults at the bad guys and eating fried rice out of paper boxes with chopsticks.

There’s even a photograph of a Japanese girl who I’m ashamed to admit that now I can only remember her first name, which was Midori, but I remember she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. You must remember I was young and hadn’t seen everything yet. But she was lovely.

But the one that stands out, the one that I don’t need to see to actually see if you know what I mean, is the one of the temple in Kamakura pictured above. If I could only describe the thunderous silence that surrounded it and the way the moonlight struck the roof and illuminated the garden and the feeling that what ever you might seek in your life was right here right now, I think I could die a happy man, or at least a contented one.

It’s possible I didn’t have all of those thoughts at the time, I was only 18 after all, and there was the beautiful Midori waiting nearby, but something made me take the picture and that something has stayed with me through the years. Many, many memories and experiences have taken place and added up since then but few equal the intensity of emotion that occurs when I see this image again. Just thought I’d share it with you because it’s rare, at least for me, to have a memory that is over half a century old still so vivid and clear.

Note: For those of you that are interested here is a link to a YouTube video that has the original music and lyrics. Sorry about the ad that runs in front of it, thankfully it’s a short one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYPJOCxSUFc

ManySheep

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SandIsland3915click to enlarge

One of the things you notice about petroglyphs after you see a few of them is their sameness. This is not a bad thing, but there seems to have been an accepted way for their artists to portray the subject matter regardless of the geographical location. That has always seemed odd to me. Did they have an art school where young stone drawing artists were sent to learn the proper way to draw Bighorn Sheep and then returned home to their tribe to chronicle the information in the proscribed way ? The subjects are all approximately the same physical size on the rock, you never see close-ups of a Bighorn sheep’s head for instance or any variation for that matter, yet these images may be several hundred miles apart, a really significant distance when you consider they walked everywhere and a ten mile jaunt would be huge distance to travel for the average inhabitant to make unless they were relocating. It might be the origin of a guild system where the resident artist took a young apprentice under their tutelage and soundly drilled the basics into them so there wouldn’t be any variation and the information from the image would then be available to anyone seeing it. None of this three-legged sheep with one horn business to confuse the viewer. But even if this happened why didn’t different schools of art develop. That would be a natural condition. One guy who drew the legs a little longer than his teacher so that eventually you would have the long legged Bighorn school of art group and then a form of regional art, but this never seemed to have happened. I know that in Japan the art of Ukiyo-e or wood block printing was taught in this way, a guild system, and the young students were shown the proper way to draw just one line that would be the start of a face or hand, no deviation, do it exactly as shown or you ran the risk of getting your rice bowl broken and you heaved out into the street. Unfortunately I don’t have the answers but I think it’s high time we perfected this time travel thing so that we could go back and get some of these mysteries solved. Deep thoughts, I know, and its a Monday too. In the meantime, questions or not, I can enjoy the beauty of these ancient images for what they are, and share them with you.