Japanese baseball got off to a late start this year because of the earthquake, but all of the teams now have played more than 40 games. The big surprise is that my Tokyo team, the Swallows, is in first place in the Central League! The Yokohama Bay Stars (pictured here) have resumed their normal position near the bottom of the standings. The Softbank Hawks are leading the Pacific League, winning more than 70% of their games. Sadly, the team closest to the March disaster, the Rakuten Eagles, are bringing up the rear in the Pacific.

Posted on June 8th, 2011 under Japan. Tags: baseball. Comments Off on Japanese baseball standings

I mentioned a while ago that we caught a bus from Shinjuku in the morning to get to Hakuba. Today’s photo is of my kids just before getting on the bus outside of the west exit of Shinjuku Station. You can see the famous Yodobashi Camera (ヨドバシカメラ) and electronics store behind them. It hadn’t opened yet.

Even though this picture isn’t much more than a year old Ellie and Ryan have really changed. They barely look like these little kids any more.

Posted on June 7th, 2011 under Japan. Tags: ellie, ryan, shinjuku. Comments Off on Shinjuku bus stop

My random wallpaper today features me gazing at a Picasso that can be found at the National Museum of Western Art, a museum in Ueno Park that I visited in 1989 and then again in 2009 when this photo was taken.

Posted on June 6th, 2011 under Japan. Tags: museums, ueno. Comments Off on Pondering Picasso

While you can see Mt. Fuji from many places in Kofu (Yamanashi Ken) on a clear day, it doesn’t look this big without using a photography technique called perspective distortion. This “trick” is not difficult and doesn’t require Photoshop or any other editing. Merely have people, or some other object which has a standard size, at a distance from the camera, zoom or use a focal length of 150mm or more, and then have the very distant object behind these objects. Perspective distortion will then make the very distant object (in this case Mt. Fuji) look much larger than what the natural eye sees. For another example of perspective distortion see this prior entry showing Mt. Fuji from central Tokyo.

Posted on June 5th, 2011 under Japan. Tags: kofu, mt. fuji, photography. Comments: 1

Today’s random desktop background image is a bit dated. I took this photo in 2007 in Kyoto. The maneki neko (welcoming cat), that is so common at the entrance of Japanese stores, was on the roof of this establishment. The lanterns indicate that some sort of Evening Special Viewing (夜の特別拝観) was going on at nearby Kiyomizu Dera (清水寺).

Posted on June 4th, 2011 under Japan. Tags: kyoto, lanterns. Comments Off on Maneki Neko (招き猫)