Focal Inhabitants - Week 19 (September 16 - September 20)

Focal Inhabitants

Week 19

*huge sigh*

My apologies. I realize that posting has been a bit intermittent due to my recent vacation, so bear with me over the following week. I should hopefully be up to date by next Tuesday if all goes well. I've spent the past couple of nights going over the 2000+ pictures I took while on vacation, choosing the ones I want to keep and getting rid of the rest. It's tedious work, but at least the pictures I'm looking through are very nice for the most part.

Here's my plan for updates over the next week. I should have three different posts which will cover the following.

1. Bangkok
2. Phuket
3. Ko Phi Phi

I plan to have them all done by the end of next weekend, but that's really fucking ambitious, so no promises.

That's big enough a waste of space though. On with what you're really looking for here: the week BEFORE I left for Thailand.

Yeah.

That's right.

You get to wait a little while longer for the actual recount of my self-described "global wanderings". I shall sit back in my tiny apartment and steeple my fingers as I imagine the argent needles of anticipation gnawing at the periphery of your every waking moment. This thought makes me grin in the most savage of glee...

Seriously though, I'm sorry, I'm writing as fast as I can.


Well, the week leading up to Thailand, Tuesday to Saturday, was pretty uneventful. Class went along as per usual, although everyone was pretty busy due to Sean's impending departure. We spent a lot of time working with a really great manager named Hosomi. He's a quite cool and relaxed and he's been a great help in smoothing everything over. I've heard this is typical of Kansai people but...

WAIT

Hold up.

Kansai people? Okay, one second.

It's generally thought in Japan that people from Kansai (Osaka, Nara and Kyoto) are much more relaxed and laid back than a lot of the other Japanese. They're thought to have a strong sense of humor and are also supposed to be a bit more direct than most of their compatriots. A lot of this is thought to descend from the merchant background of Osaka, which was and still is a major port city. Most of those characteristics would likely not be so pronounced if it wasn't due to the region's close proximity to the Kanto region. Kanto people are supposed to be more reserved and respectful, traditionally Japanese. Once of the mountain range, relaxed and humorous, the other side serious and traditional. Interesting, no?

Rerouting back to the main dialogue from that digression, the Kansai characteristics are well represented in Hosomi. He's a chill guy.

So that was pretty much the week at school, really nothing amazing. On Wednesday I took an extended lunch to run back to Kichijoji and Yodobashi camera again. I bought a couple of lenses for my camera (which have since been EXTREMELY useful. Worth every yen). One of them is a telephoto, the Canon EF 55-200MM USM F 4.5-5.6 II. It's not the sturdiest lens on the planet, but it's relatively cheap for a decent telephoto. For the uninitiated a Telephoto lens is used to make very distant objects appear very close.

The other lens is a Canon EF 50mm F 1-1.8 prime lens. It has no zoom function on it, but that's okay, because its focal length is already covered in the lens I got with my camera (18-55mm). The point of this lens is just that it takes verrrrry clear photos and is cheap, like the budgie (thank you Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). The second to fifth pictures above show the flexibility I've gained with the new purchases:

#2 - 18-55mm lens at 18mm (wide angle)
#3 - 55-200mm lens at 200mm (telephoto)
#4 - 50mm lens at, well, 50mm because I can't very well change that
#5 - 55mm-200mm on the left, 55mm on the right, digital clock only thing in focus.

With these two lenses I was already starting to feel like a real photographer. I'll let you judge by next week's shots whether this is accurate or not.

Other than that, the week was all about frantic planning and co-ordination before departing the land of the rising sun for a week. I did, however, get bored on Thursday night and took one of the above pictures. I'm sure you can guess which one.

Saturday night just involved me going home and packing for the trip. I had a pretty solid load by the time I was done, which was stupid in retrospect, but that's another story, for another blog post, another day, another...format. Or something.

Tune in over the next few days for the description of the exciting stuff.

Until...tomorrow? I remain, as always...

Ian "Mello Yello" Cantello