This is going to be a quick update - I'm just back from work, and I've got a little birthday party soon. Thank you to everyone who sent me e-mails and messages, I suppose I am older now.

Last week I had some free time at Nishino Elementary school, a tiny elementary with 30 students, and I went out into the schoolyard with the third and fourth graders. I wanted to use the new lens a bit more, and the kids at Nishino are incredibly cute. I'm sticking with the black and white for a bit.


Rina-chan. One of my favorites.


Maho-chan, hysterically crying while holding her unicycle. I didn't find out why she was crying until a couple days ago. Stay tuned and you can find out too.


My new favorite photographic subject. This is Hatsune-chan. She is a third grader who is cute, bright, and fearless. When I show up at school, if she sees me, she usually tries to tackle me. Sometimes she warns me not to take pictures of her. This is one of those occasions. Here are a few more of her.


My favorite one.


This one was mostly taken by accident. The lesson learned - take more pictures by accident.



This next picture is by a guest photographer.


I left my camera on my bed one day, and came home to find this picture on the card. I had no idea what had happened, and then I realized that while I was at work, Neko took this picture. Nice work, Neko.

The next school is Higashino Junior High. They are the same school that did the Hokkaido visit, and by an odd arrangement of outside events, my schedule, and the way the weeks line up with vacations, I'm there an awful lot. Now I've been hired (pro bono, but still, hired!) as the photographer for their Undokai - Sports Day. I've been to four practices now, and the actual Undokai isn't until June 4th, but I've photographed them all. This is an indoor one.


I love the kids' indoor shoes. Thin little sneakers with blue stripes on them, boys and girls all wear the same kind, most of them have their names written in kanji down the back.


They have this awesome race where one guy runs along the backs of his teammates, who have to keep sprinting ahead of him and making the bridge that he walks on. They usually have to go through some figure eights and such, and they have to wear a special outfit. The kid on the right has just about a perfect runner's pose, no?


They use a regulation-length long bamboo pole to stabilize themselves.

Next up was feats of strength. I'm not sure how else to describe them. One teacher suggested "Tumbling" but that's not quite it.








Are you noticing that every single teacher and student has an awesome track suit? I definetly need to get one.


The human pyramid. They are really super serious about their human pyramids here, usually a kid stands on top, ten or more feet off the ground. They do come crashing down quite often too, I tried to photograph it, but the dim light in the gym made them all blurry. Trust me, it's a site to see when one girl's elbow just gives out and the whole thing caves into a writhing mass of arms, legs, and shrieks.

I will post one more set of pictures from rehearsals, and then you'll get to see the actual Undokai - won't it be fun? Today I photographed marching practice, and I started feeling Undokai photography fatigue. There are only so many ways you can photograph kids on a sandy field marching in formation around a track to bombastic music.

In other news, I woke up a few days ago and found what at first looked like a giant ball of lint on my floor. When I went over to it, I found that it was not a ball of lint at all, but a giant spider - the latest victim of my awesome, awesome cat.


That is a huge, hairy spider. the watch is there for scale.


My cat - too cool for school.


After determining that she didn't want to eat it, I threw the spider out the window, where it may have broken the car windshield it landed on.

As a note to end on, this may be odd - but isn't this just the nicest package of mushrooms you've ever seen?



I've been excited to post Friday's pictures since the day I took them. Stay tuned.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 24, 2006 at 5:44 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.