Zōkyō

Setsubun was yesterday, the day before the first day of spring. Its a Japanese household ritual to purify a family’s home of all the evil spirits and bad luck of the previous year, and bring in all the good spirits and fortune of the new year. Usually the father of the house wears an Oni (demon) mask and  Japanese kids throw roasted soybeans at him that they have collected at the local shrine earlier in the day. They shout “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!” which means, “Out with the Demons In with the Hapiness!”. Then its customary to eat one bean for each year of one’s life plus one more for bringing good luck for the new year.

These are all the kids earlier in the day at the local shrine trying to catch the beans thrown from the monks that they will throw at the Oni later. I couldn’t help but think of a park pond’s gold Koi fish swarming the bridge’s bread crumb thrower.

Yesterday, I dropped by my mate Koga san‘s awesome bookstore cafe, Tegamisha in Tsutsujigaoka and had a coffee and some sweets. The cafe is located in an unsuspecting location in the courtyard of a giant drab apartment complex.
The people living in the area are very lucky to have this enclave of goodness at the center, serving up its amazing concoctions with extreme attention to beautiful detail in the way only Japanese do. Although I didn’t eat anything, every dish that came out of the kitchen made me giggle with mouth-watering delight seeing such wonderfully thought out dishes.

The coffee was amazing and served in a beautiful hand-made ceramic cup that kept my hands warm while I perused many of the awesome old books there.

I found one old book from maybe the 70′s that featured 100 Japanese photographers. I got to a page that looked somewhat familiar by an artist known as Hiromichi Moriyama.

Upon closer inspection there was no mistaking it was Daido.

Here are some close-ups.

Haha, so cool…

Anyway, you should go check this place out. Its really cool and well worth a walk over. Here’s a map.

Chimpanzee

This was taken with a Leica M8 on loan from Joi. I have been having a lot of fun with this camera a enjoying the ease of workflow that comes with working in digital. I’m quite impressed with how similar the photos from this camera look when compared to the film versions although I find that I am shooting ten times the amount of photos with it and perhaps tend to not take as much time to get it right the first time. While its a same form factor as my M6′s its a totally different shooting style, but one I am quite enjoying. Looking forward to using it more…

Flag Bearers, Shimokitazawa Matsuri, 2009.

Doc Hayata performing yet another Photal Lobotomy on one of my babies…