Sometimes
when you drive by the beach
you see big bastard machines
and boys on skateboards
and
you don’t know if
one is going to crush the other
but you figure
what the hell
you might as well stop
have a look
and wait to find out.
(Erosion control @ Ocean Beach, San Francisco 2016. This photo is also on Flickr.)
It was a dark morning in Tokyo and had been raining for most of the night. On my way to a Ministop convenience store to buy some natto maki and an egg salad sandwich for breakfast, I spotted this kid who was dragging a huge cooler through the rainy streets.
We were headed the same way so I ended up following him for several hundred yards. Pulling the cooler while juggling the umbrella and huge shoulder bag made the kid stop a few times to redistribute and manage his burdens. Finally while passing a small park he stopped long enough for me to take his picture. I was also going to offer to help him schlep the cooler to wherever he was going.
But when he saw me as I snapped this photograph he barked a string of Japanese words which included “no way” and “foreigner”, and I knew immediately that there was no point in trying to offer my help.
(Hydrangea Park, Nakano, Tokyo 2015)
If you regularly take the Chūō Line from Shinjuku towards points west, you may have seen this face. It overlooks a playground at a school for little kids. I’ve wanted a picture of this place for years, so last October I walked from Nakano Station towards Shinjuku and found it.
I like to think there are many concrete gods in Tokyo, and they regard this wall here as their beloved pet…
(Nakano 6-chome, Tokyo 2015)
Yesterday, Saturday, I didn’t even leave the Brisbane city limits. I had no ambitions, no agenda, so I just tooled around town, doing various little things and taking photographs as I went. Bopping around Brisbane isn’t like prowling the streets of San Francisco or Tokyo, but this town is visually rich if you just stop to take a considered look. Here are some samples of what I shot yesterday…
Midtown Market ↑
Beautiful hair, Sierra Point Road ↑
Brisbane Marina ↑
Brisbane Marina docks ↑
Sierra Point Yacht Club ↑
(Brisbane, California 2016)
It’s Children’s Day in Japan. So here are some children, in Tokyo, Japan. And what I wish for them is that they grow into happy adults living in a better world than the one we’re currently destroying. But the older I get the more likely it seems that they’ll end being some kind of global janitorial guild charged with cleaning up our mess.
Or maybe they’ll have to give up and terraform Mars…
Nakano 5-chome ↑
Nakano 5-chome ↑
Minami-senju Station ↑
Hanazono Shrine, Shinjuku ↑
Akagi Shrine, Kagurazaka ↑
Yamashiroya, Ueno ↑
Takadanobaba Station, Tōzai Line ↑
(Tokyo, Japan, October & November 2015)
She was tagging along while her dad walked his dog along Palou Avenue in Hunters Point in San Francisco. Dad and the dog are on the left. On the sidewalk nearby there was trash, discarded clothing, and a dead raccoon. Hunters Point can be that kind of neighborhood. But that didn’t keep her from skipping, giggling, hugging dad’s dog, and being the cutest thing lighting up the street that day…
(Hunters Point, San Francisco 2016)
Just a Tokyo kid being a kid, on a rainy day when a frog slicker and a superhero mask made perfect sense within the context of the ever-changing job descriptions that children constantly write for themselves…
(Nakano 5-chome, Tokyo, April 2012)