Stock photos of Japan, Japanese culture, and life
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Spent a bit of time in the city looking for interesting things to contrast, and this is what I’ve found. Basically, a theme became apparent, that the city is noisy, busy, and any adjective to use is somehow an active one. These images are also available as prints, mouse pads, mugs, and so forth.
Poem of a Cacophonous City – Images by Andrew Blyth
Typhoon Roke has finally made it here. It will pass directly over Nagoya and then Tokyo. The wind doesn’t seem as strong as the previous typhoon, Talas. Rain associated with Roke has caused flooding in Nagoya where authorities issued evacuation orders for 1 million of the 2 million residents of Nagoya. It sounds desperate, but it is not. Most of the residents Nagoya live in multi-story condominium buildings or multi-story apartments. Only householders near the Shonai River are indeed flooded. Affected areas are mainly Moriyama and Tempaku. NHK, the national broadcaster, showed pictures of city residents taking refuge in emergency shelters last night, ahead of additional or continued flooding, and ahead of the approach of the typhoon.
Yesterday many workers and students attending their first days of the new semester were stranded at train stations as underground services were flooded, or high risks due to the winds. The stranding of commuters was the probable cause of mobile phone services working only intermittently. Despite learning that stranded passengers in Tokyo was a huge problem after the March-eleven quake, Nagoya seemed unprepared.
Below are photos from Typhoon Talas. I’m not leaving my area until I’m sure that my home and neighbourhood is safe, then I might venture out. My area has a warning of high risk of storm surge causing inundation. My pictures, below, show the storm surge and tsunami protection, however, not all parts of the dyke is as strong and reinforced as those shown.
Disasters – Images by Andrew Blyth
Tags: disaster, extreme weather, flood, japan, japanese, nagoya, typhoon, typhoon roke, weather
Typhoon Roke is still coming, and at the time of writing, the storm zone is still not over Nagoya (my city). Strangely, we’ve had a large amount of rain, but not a massive amount, but parts of Nagoya have been flooded. I would never have thought this, as the rain was not intense enough for long enough, consequently I never thought to even bother go around the town to take a look. 79,000 people in Nagoya have been told to evacuate, and they are apart of the 1.2 million having to move, too. Currently there is no wind, and the storm zone isn’t over Nagoya, yet. The rain is merely associated with the typhoon.
It appears that mobile phone services are operating in some areas intermittently, perhaps as many stranded commuters are calling home saying that their train services are closed or the underground stations flooded.
For the latest information see the Japan Weather Agency website. I’m afraid I don’t know of any other informational services in languages other than Japanese. Currently, it seems the worst of the storm should have past Nagoya by 6pm Wednesday (local time), but Tokyo would still be affected. Companies often stipulate that if there is a Gale Warming (red) then workers are not required to attend. Most companies are not concerned about the other warnings (including flood, rain, and risks of landslides).
Tags: disaster, flood, japan, japanese, nagoya, typhoon, typhoon roke
The annual Nagoya Dance Festival, locally known as the Nagoya Domatsuri, was held again this weekend. For details and history of the event, see this previous blog post about the Domatsuri. Whilst photos are still being processed you can browse last years photos, below.
Nagoya Domatsuri – Images by Andrew Blyth
Also, to whet your appetite, here is a video…
It’s taken a while, but they’re finally done being processed. Domatsuri images are available at both my Asia Photo Connection portfolio and my PhotoShelter account.
In case you’re wondering. The Nagoya Dance Festival (or ‘domatsuri’) is an annual event held in summer. It’s based on the Hokkaido version of the traditional Japanese dance and town festival. Hokkaido was first occupied by the Japanese a little over one hundred years ago, mostly by Japanese who were running from the law, had debts that couldn’t be repaid and so forth. The Sapporo (main city in Hokkaido) dance festival is an ecclectic mix of different dance styles, and because of its proximity it also has Chinese and kung-fu influences, too. Some university from Nagoya entered the Sapporo dance festival and imported it to Nagoya the following year. Soon after the City of Nagoya took it over and the Nagoya Dance Festival became bigger and well established.
Today, it retains it’s Sino-kung fu-Hokkaido-traditional Japanese dance styles, and attracts dance teams from all over Japan, including university teams, local townships, community groups, company sponsored teams, and this year the highly popular and local teen-music group SKE-48 (I briefly saw them at the end and couldn’t get any shots… dammit!). Over 200 teams a year enter, with an enrolment of over 23,000 participants. It attracts a TV viewing audience of nearly two million viewers.
My images are at my Asia Photo Connection and my PhotoShelter portfolios; ready for immediate purchase.
Nagoya Domatsuri – Images by Andrew Blyth
Tags: annual event, dance festival, domatsuri, nagoya
In case you’re waiting, here’s an update. Of 978 photos, by far the most I’ve ever taken in one day, I’ve narrowed the selection down to 210. From there I’m now down to 168. My aim is to whittle the selection down to 100… it’ll take a few more days.
Tags: dance festival, domatsuri, nagoya
I needed to mind my daughter today, the first day of the Nagoya Dance festival, known in Japanese as ‘Domatsuri’. The Nagoya Domatsuri is becoming the premier event of this type in Japan, even though the event was inspired by the Hokkaido Dance Festival, and is only a little more than 10 years old.
Since I couldn’t do any shooting, I took my little Sony Bloggie (professional grade bloggers video camera [insert sarcastic facial expression]), and recorded some performances. With a three year old leaning on me, and crowds getting in the way, this is the best vid’. I hope you get an idea of the high energy that performers put in. Annually, more than 23,000 performers take part from 3 years of age up to perhaps 80 or so. There are local town teams, university teams, and corporate sponsored teams. TV audiences are almost 2 million. It’s a big event.
I’ll be properly photographing this tomorrow (Sunday) when I can bring in my gear.
Tags: dance festival, domatsuri, japan, japanese, nagoya
Next weekend is the Nagoya Dance Festival, or ‘Domatsuri’. I’ll be attending. Usually it’s either extraodinarily hot and sunny, and terrible to photograph in; or wet, humid, hot and terrible to photograph in. Wish me luck this year. The Nagoya dance festival is not a traditional town festival, nor traditional dance event. It was modelled on the Hokkaido event that the Nagoya university students attended, and were impressed by. Consequently, because of the Hokkaido influence, there are Sino-Japanese style dances, rock/pop influences, as well as more traditional or jazzed-up styles as well. It’s dynamic, and a feast for the eye. I always love to see the Kyoto University teams, they have time and depth-of-knowledge to dedicate in their preparations for this event. This is a must see for all tourists visiting Nagoya at this time of year.
My blurb for PhotoShelter portfolio gallery (shown below)
The Nagoya Dance Festival competition, known locally as Domatsuri is an annual summer event held at the end of August. Domatsuri was first organised by university students in 1999, and later taken over by the city. It now attracts over 200 teams with over 20,000 participants, with an audience of nearly 2 million viewers.?
As you can see it’s a big event, and a very big deal. More information can be found at the Domatsuri webpage (in English). Below is the gallery available on my PhotoShelter portfolio, but more is also available at Asia Photo Connection (13 images available, see pages 5-6).
Nagoya Domatsuri – Images by Andrew Blyth
Tags: competition, dance, domatsuri, festival, japan, japanese, matsuri, nagoya, summer, traditional
Every year it’s been a tough one. Last year I wanted to go, but found that for one reason or another, I had something else to do (I don’t remember). The year before was my first time attending, and it wasn’t bad. I went on the Sunday, the day of the main events and got some great shots. It was a pretty nervous experience, trying to work out what’s cool and not cool to do. Working out how to photograph people in crowds and such, and also contending with crowds, too.
This year was different. I went on the opening day, the Osu Kanon parade in the Osu district of Nagoya city. There were more people there than organisers had expected, and jammed in a much smaller space, and it wasn’t elbow-room only, but squeezing-room only. It was perhaps the hottest day of the year so far, and with perhaps the highest humidity yet experienced this year. Needless to say, migrainers like myself didn’t have much fun.
As for the photography, some light cloud cover can be nice to even out the light, but thick clouds did not help, invoking noisy pictures. It was a tough day, and I fear the photos bear that result. These are available at a lowered price at my PhotoShelter account, no model releases due to the public nature of the event. However, as you see, the costumes were amazing, and as you can guess, so to the experience for the crowds and the young re-carpeted cosplayers.
World Cosplay Summit 2010 – Images by Andrew Blyth
Tags: cosplay, japan, japanese, nagoya, summer, world cosplay summit, youth culture
They crash, they fall, the slide, they roll, but they don’t bounce! Comments welcome.
Sumo Spills – Images by Andrew Blyth