I imagined Bangkok to be so smoggy that we wouldn’t ever see blue sky. I don’t know if we were just lucky, or if the skies were normal during our three-night stay, but we had blue skies and white, fluffy clouds until the day we departed. The above photo was taken from our taxi on the way from the airport to our hotel.

We arrived in the late afternoon on a Sunday. There is a “weekend only” market called Chatuchak which is only open on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We got on the Bangkok Skytrain after checking into our hotel to get to Chatuchak. We arrived at about closing time. Some vendors were closing up, but many were still open. The crowds are smaller and the temperature not quite as hot so going at closing is not a bad idea.

Some vendors had a sign saying “no pictures” so when I saw the above from far away I took a zoomed picture in case there was such a sign when we got closer. It turns out the above “fruit” is actually all fake.

There were plenty of other colorful stalls though.

The selection was endless and the prices were good.

Posted on December 30th, 2009 under Thailand. Tags: bangkok, clouds, skywatch. Comments: 1

Meiji Jingu is to the right. Yoyogi Park is just past the trees. I don’t think this shot would have come out as well with my TZ7. I used my LX3 for this one.

Posted on December 27th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: clouds, harajuku, night photography, skywatch, sunset, Tokyo. Comments Off on Sunset behind Yoyogi National Gymnasium (国立代々木競技場)

I understand that some of my relatives, following the blog, wanted to see more pictures of overweight males wearing little. So today’s entry is for them. 😉

It is at moments like those shown in the above photograph that you are glad you don’t have a first row seat. There isn’t much space outside the ring before the Sumo wrestlers fall into the spectators below. With hundreds of bouts in a day, several people end up with hundreds of pounds of flesh falling into their laps. I’d be surprised if there haven’t been some injuries.

Today’s pictures are from the September tournament. The November tournament is now underway in Fukuoka. The above photo is of the Ryogoku Kokugikan (両国国技館) in Tokyo.

As mentioned in a prior entry, the above yokozuna, Hakuho (白鵬), was defeated on this night. Hakuho has been the best sumo wrestler of late, winning 10 of the prior 15 tournaments. This photo captures his last happy moment of day 6 in the tournament. Hakuho went on to win the rest of his bouts, including one over the other yokozuna, Asashoryu. Unfortunately for him, Hakuho’s loss on day 6 of the tournament meant that he would have to beat Asashoryu twice to win the tournament. Asashoryu doesn’t lose twice in a row often and he didn’t on day 15 of the tournament either. Asashoryu won the September tournament with a record of 15-1, including the playoff victory, for only his fourth tournament victory in the past 16 tournaments.

I can hardly wait for January to come around as the tournament will return to Tokyo. I have tickets to the final day. Stay tuned.

Posted on November 21st, 2009 under Japan. Tags: buildings, clouds, hakuho, people, sumo. Comments: 4

After a business meeting one morning in Akasaka (赤坂) I had an hour or two to kill before I needed to jump on a train for Kanagawa Ken. I found Hiejinja (日枝神社), and spent some time there (photos coming soon). As I wandered away, looking for a Tokyo Metro station, the sky got really beautiful. As blue skies broke through multiple layers of crazy cloud shapes I decided to pull out my camera and take the above picture.

It wasn’t until I got to the bottom of the hill (where there was still no metro station) and found a large, public map on the street corner board that I realized I had just accidentally photographed the Prime Minister’s Official Residence in my attempt to capture a cool looking sky. Compare this to someone walking down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC with no awareness that the White House could be found on the street. Seeing an impressive array of clouds they take a photograph and end up with a picture of the White House in the process. This is essentially what I did in Japan.

Posted on October 8th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: buildings, clouds, skywatch, Tokyo. Comments: 2

My second Japanese baseball game of the 2009 season was my first in central Tokyo. The place was Meiji Jingu Stadium (明治神宮野球場) which is almost walking distance from my apartment. My daughter and I took the train instead of making the 40 minute or so walk.

The sunset was beautiful, even with countless beer girls jumping in front of the camera. The number of beer girls at Jingu was staggering. I have been to many, many baseball games in more than a dozen parks in three countries and have never seen anything like it. The ratio of fans to beer vendors was probably about 10:1.

Like our experience in Chiba, we were on the big screen within minutes of our arrival. Unlike the games I’ve been to in Tokorozawa and Chiba, there were lots of foreigners at the Swallows’ game. At those other games it seemed we were the only foreigners among tens of thousands of Japanese. At the Swallows’ game, perhaps as much as 1% of the crowd was not Japanese.

Posted on October 8th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: baseball, beer, clouds, meiji jingu stadium, people, skywatch, sunset. Comments Off on Yakult Swallows – Part 1