"I Learned My Lesson" - Los Angeles Travel Photographer

“I learned my lesson”, she said, at a café overlooking the Mirror Lake (Kagami-Ike, in Japanese) in Nagano, Japan.

It was an early morning. The misty air was as still as the surface of the lake. The Mt. Togakushi (戸隠山) in the background was playing hide-and-seek with us.

While we were having fun with the visual interests, a breeze swept through. The mirror was broken. All of sudden, we remembered dozing off on the bus for an hour and the subsequent half-an-hour hike to get to this location in cold November weather. It was decided that we'd put in enough hard work and the café sitting quietly on the gentle slop became a tempting idea.

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She and her husband had been living in Southern California for 30 years and moved back to Japan 6 years ago. Curious about the cultural differences, I inquired about the transition in workplace.

”I learned my lesson”, she said, “and I’ve kept my mouth shut since”.

The recent resignation of the Tokyo Olympics chief over sexist comments reminded me of our conversation with this lady from Southern California.

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P.S. Remember I see landscape in human bodies? Well, vice versa is also true - I see human body in landscape. Do you see it in the first image?

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This Valentine's Day, I Wish You Compatible Weirdness - Los Angeles Travel Photographer

I thought it was funny that my eyes gravitate towards interesting (ahem, weird) couples in the animal kingdom.

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But then, it seems the feeling is mutual. These two king penguins came to check out me and my Assistante. It must be proof that our funky spirit somehow vibrates on the same frequency that they do.

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Dr. Seuss says ”We're all a little weird, and life's a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”

I’m glad that we got the seal of approval from the unbiased judges that we stayed on our paths of being weird after years of marriage.

This Valentine’s Day, I hope you are celebrating your authentic weirdness with your compatible other.

Unless you prefer the picture depicted by Ray Barone (as in Everybody Loves Raymond):

“You wake up, she's there. You come back from work, she's there. You fall asleep, she's there. You eat dinner, she's there. You know? I mean, I know that sounds like a bad thing, but it's not."

The choice is yours. Cheers!

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Surprise in a Cemetery in Japan's Kiso Valley - Los Angeles Travel Photographer

For obvious reasons, I don’t seek out cemeteries in my travels. 😊 If I happen to be at one such location, I usually don’t make photographs, out of respect for the spirits that may be around.

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When we arrived at Kozenji Temple (興禅寺) in Kiso-Fukushima in rain, my legs followed my eyes to the cemetery in the back of the temple instead. While there, I found myself fighting the strong urge to photograph. In the end, the urge won.

Kozenji Temple was established in 1434 by the 12th Kiso lord Nobumichi (木曾信道), who himself was buried there, along with the 19th lord Yoshiyasu Kiso (木曾義康). It’s the name on the grave stone next to his though that gave away the family origin - Minamoto no Yoshinaka (源義仲), the last name that traces back to one of the four noble clans during the Heian period in Japan. It is from there I was able to learn the history of the family and the stories of this Kiso clan.

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By the time we left, we were covered in as brilliant of colors as those rain-saturated maple leaves. I couldn’t believe that I enjoyed photographing in a cemetery so much. I was even more nicely surprised to have happened upon one for people with stories from hundred of years ago.

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I hope I did the cemetery justice while respecting privacy.

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