Some days the sky just flares up and I can’t help but take some photos, even though I’ve seen it a million times already since I came to live here. Today the sky was one of those skies that never seems to come out right in a photo. No matter how much I adjusted the white balance the colors wouldn’t come out right. The tungsten setting looked the most ‘realistic’, but didn’t at all capture the warm colors that I could see with my eyes. Every other white balance setting made everything yellow instead of just the yellow parts. I guess in this case the unrealistic photos were not to blame on the white balance, but it’s rather the human eyes that manage to see things that no modern camera can see, thanks to the eye’s ability to resolve extreme differences in contrast.

I found out today that I have a serious focusing issue with my 10-20mm . When focusing at or near infinity it’s always off by a large enough amount to make photos seem blurry. I’ll have to see if I can fix it in-camera tomorrow, but if that won’t fix things then I’ll have to send it in for repair. No telling how long that would take…

Bonus: here’s a panorama

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is the name of a small region of space that the Hubble telescope observed. I thought I’d just mention the awesomeness of this endeavour here. The result of the observation is an image that looks too fantastic and science-fiction-like to even appear in Star Trek, yet it’s real.  The HUDF is awesome because of two reasons. First, because it shows in great clarity how utterly insignificant we humans are. And second, because it shows, despite our insignificance, how far we’ve come that we’re able to accomplish a thing like this.

Yay human race. Now get a move on and start colonizing other planets.

Edit: just a test to see if blogging from my mobile phone still works. Obviously it does, but next time I’d better rotate the picture..

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That big warehouse-like building is where I grew up. For twenty and one years I lived there with my parents and my little sister. The building may not look like much right now, and even when we still lived there it didn’t look very cozy, but the inside was a whole different world. Large, spacious and warm. That’s how I remember it. Well, only some rooms were warm because there was no central heating and there were only heaters in some of the rooms, but we were young and we didn’t know any better! Thanks to Google Street View I spent the last two hours looking around the area where I used to live. Call me old but I am still very impressed that I’m able to do a thing like this from the other side of the world.

I really enjoy walking, cycling or driving around the area I live in. It’s something that I’ve learned from my father, who used to go out driving with me when I was little. He would always show me a new road that I hadn’t seen before. After I got my drivers license I did the same thing by myself for a while, before I moved to Japan. I never owned a car here in Japan, but as you can see from this blog I do go around on foot and by bicycle a lot.

I used street view to follow the route from my parents’ home to work, to my old house, my old school, and so on. On the way I saw a lot of people. Young people, who were probably not even born when I went to school there. Yup, I’m getting older, but I’m still young enough to make enthousiastic “vroom vroom” noises while following the road in street view

I do miss Holland. I miss my family of course, and the scenery, and I miss how relaxed I used to feel when I lived there. I realized that it’s not impossible to go back, if I wanted to. I have two homes to choose from. It’s a luxury not many people have.

Thank you Google! This is a service I would gladly pay for, and you’re offering it for free. Google will save the world one day, mark my words.

(final part of the OoYama hiking trip. read part two here.)

The trail to Yabitsu path started off as a very narrow path on a mountain ridge, slowly going downward in a fairly straight line. Eventually the path receded enough to hide the sun behind the big mountain for large areas of the trail. It was in this area that I came across the scene below.

All trees except a few have lost their leaves already. In the area between two mountain ranges not enough sunlight can penetrate and the autumn is already happening.

The path was a fairly easy hike, and I did not encounter many people along the way. I made good speed and managed to reach the Yabitsu pass bus stop well before dark. Still feeling energetic I decided to walk back to the train station instead of taking the bus. The way back was a very nice mountain pass, flowing left and right while slowly going down. Because it was a road for cars it was very easy to walk on, but it was also very long and not very steep. During my hike down the sun started to set and I managed to get some nice photos of the scenery.

Right around the time when the sun disappeared behind the mountains (~16:30-17:00) I reached an observation tower that offered me a great view of mount Fuji. I stayed around there for a while to take photos, and then realized that there was no bus stop there. Not a huge problem, since my feet were still feeling ok, but it was starting to get dark quickly, so I started to walk a bit faster than before.

But I wasn’t quick enough. The mountain road was a never-ending zigzagging path without any street light, and twenty minutes after I departed from the observation tower I was walking around in pitch black darkness with no idea of how much further the next bus stop was. Occasionally a car would pass me by and illuminate the road with their headlights. I don’t know who was more scared it these cases: the car drivers who suddenly had to avoid a weird foreigner walking down the road, or me, scrambling to the side of the road for cover. It was right about at this time that a car hit me, and I died.

All in all it was a very nice hike, and it took me about 30 more minutes to reach the next bus stop. From there on it was a short bus ride back to the station and an even shorter train ride back to my bicycle. I managed to cycle back to Atsugi just in time to join my friend for a well-deserved bowl of ramen at Ippachiya .

It’s nice to hike by yourself. You get to decide your own schedule and you’re much more flexible than if you are with a group. Japanese are especially notorious for planning everything up to one month in advance, including the tiny details. This doesn’t really fit with my personality as I like to do random things and change my plans at the last minute. I will certainly do this kind of trip again some time.

(the continuation of part one which you can find here)

Having arrived at the summit sooner than I’d expected, I had time for a break. I found a nice spot and enjoyed the view for a while. While hiking up the mountain there were some spots in the shade where some snow remained from the night before. It’s really starting to get winterish. Well, in the shade, anyway. At the summit the temperate was just perfect with the sun shining brightly on all the people taking a break at the top. I took off my jacket for a while and sat there, eating the ‘big mountain nuts’ that I bought at the bottom of the mountain.

Exploring the area a bit I came across this tree, which has snow on it on the shadow side, and nice and greenon the sunny side. It was quite difficult to take a good picture of it though, and I’m not 100% happy with the result. Oh well. After I slowly began to freeze to death I decided to head down again. Since I’ve climbed OoYama every year since I came to Japan four years ago I decided to take a different path down. Just 100 meters below the summit there’s a junction that will either take you back down to where you came from, or alternatively it will take you along the far side of the mountain (the Fuji size) to a place called Yabitsu pass, which eventually ends up in Hadano, a city not too far away from Atsugi where I live. It proved to be an interesting path indeed…

To be continued!