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Today was almost a repeat of yesterday but earlier - on the bus by 5.30am. I did wonder about spending so many days shooting the same thing, but now I understand why: we repeat, to improve on what we have done. There is the personal factor (some people have been ill & unable to go out), the weather factor, the learning factor (the image review details tips, things to try, and things for improvement), and there's the way of arranging action possibilities that cannot be done if there are other photographic tour buses around. (Don't divulge your strategic advantage.) Of course bird photography is very random & you can only control certain factors, the camera & settings, your placement/perspective. What the birds decide to do will often be completely contrary to what you want. The town 'centre' has a digital temperature sign that read -15 as we passed it this morning and it was bitterly cold standing in pre dawn at the first site as you don't have a lot of room to move about. Then its off to the second site which thankfully is in the sun and later those who wanted to (kiwi contingent) were able to go for a bit of a walk in search of landscape shots which got the blood moving to frozen numb fingers and toes. On these mornings we take breakfast with us and eat on the go but we could get hot drinks at the second place. Back to the hotel at 10.00am for quick down load of images & then it was into a group image review. Immediately after that it was off to a restaurant for lunch and out for the rest of the day shooting until just after sunset at 5.00pm. Drive back to the hotel and we have approx 60 min before dinner. After dinner maybe enjoying the onsen then more image review/editing/blogging. I tell you these trips are not for wimps! And we will do it all again tomorrow.     The swans are so funny they come heavy & ungainly in like a Hercules aircraft and then skid on the ice  The swans congregate here because of the warm hot spring under the lake, which explains the steam
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Ah this morning was all about soothing the soul. Well...after a manic start anyway. Travel brain caused me to set the alarm for Monday when its not Monday. Result: I heard a door slam somewhere and looked at the time 5.50and the bus was leaving at 6am... without you if you're not there. Fortunately the camera bag was all ready to go and shooting clothes in a pile so it was a matter of hurriedly visiting the bathroom throwing on clothes and departing the room like a hurricane. Minor matters like putting on sunscreen, brushing hair was all attended to on the bus to the amusement of all. But once we reached the secret location on Lake Kussharo we could see Whooper Swans just waking up. They spend the night in a ice free patch of water that is warmed by a hot spring. The mist drifts across the water and the silence is soothing. Ninety minutes there and we moved to the main beach where the swans are fed at 9am. There are usually a lot of people there but it was strangely quiet as there were only a couple of swans about. This location provides the opportunity to capture the swans flying in and making either elegant or ungainly landings. Pretty soon more & more swans arrived and so did the people but we spent a happy couple of hours there. It was also great for the only 2 landscape photogs (William & I), we went for a walk and discovered trees. We are told it's going to snow, and very heavily… on Thursday so that will provide different possibilities again. Not least of which might be sitting in the onsen watching the snow fall. I went to the onsen quite late last night thinking it would help me sleep. It didn't. Anyway this onsen is much prettier than the last. I was sitting in scalding hot water and looking out onto the snow and the woods. Beautiful.     Today I went to Russia - very briefly and illegally. The Stellar Sea Eagles and the White Tailed Eagle both hunt for fish in the pack ice - the need to get to the pack ice took us into Russian waters. The 4am start was gruelling for an non morning person but once out there I was fine. I'd be given a super dooper travel pill from Marion and it worked brilliantly. I worked the 100-400mm lens and found I was getting better results this time. The light was beautiful but there wasn't any of the mid-air eagle fights that I've seen in photos from the past 2 days. Mind you I probably couldn't have done it justice even if I had seen one. Once back at the hotel it was breakfast, pack up and ship out, so we spent the day driving to Kawayu, stopping on the way to visit Lake Mashu which is in the crater of a volcano and very pretty. On the way back down the hill we had another fox encounter - he was clearly working the road looking for food and it was quite obvious that people have been feeding him. The difference between me & the nature photogs is that I was happy to get 'a' shot they wanted 'the' shot - so that was almost an hour chasing the fox around like paparazzi. Mind you he was free to leave at any time. Quiet night tonight as we all need to recharge batteries, download & review images and sleep.
 Funny… a western breakfast was arranged for 6 of us this morning. Even our tour bosses can't do raw fish for breakfast. I was all mentally prepared for the boat trip this afternoon but weirdly despite there being no wind the Captain said the waves were too big so that's off the menu. Instead we went to photograph Blakiston's Owl, the largest living fish owl and on the endangered list with only about 120 left on Hokkaido. Well, at 4.15pm we arrived at a ramshackle hut that doubles as a 'restaurant' (for locals), with plastic roll up windows, to secure our spot only to find several other loads of photogs had beaten us to it. Eventually we all found adequate, if somewhat snug, possies and began arranging tripods and setting the cameras to the right tech specs. We would be shooting under floodlights about 150-200m away so needed the highest ISO as possible, lens wide open and the speed only 1/80th of a second - apparently that was because the floodlights pulsed at that speed. The owner of the ramshackle hut put fish into a little pond in the river around 5ish before it got dark. And so we waited… and we waited… and we waited. The little bugger obviously decided to dine elsewhere and we eventually gave up at 8pm. It was extremely cold. Although we were in a hut all the sides were open to allow unobstructed viewing access. When we arrived back at the hotel I could not face a 6-9 dish meal so I warmed up in the onsen and am having a snack in my room as I type. And we got the "real" story about the cancelled trip this afternoon. Apparently the boats went into Russian territory this morning so the Captains en masse decided not to risk doing it again in the afternoon as it's very likely they'll do it again tomorrow.
Our hotel is fabulous and in the Japanese style with low rock hard beds 4" off the floor, low tables & dressers & complete with it's own Onsen (hot mineral pools). I think I've mentioned the tiny bathrooms before? To give you a good picture: if you are taller than me (not hard as I'm 1.56m) your knees would almost touch the wall when sitting on the loo. I can stand in the middle and touch all four walls with my arms outstretched (including the bath). This pic is taken on a 17mm lens so the wise angle is making it look bigger than it is - note the "bathroom slippers" others are provided for the room as well. I met the others for our first "Japanese" breakfast - they've been out on the boat since 4.30am. But I took one look at the raw fish, cold scrambled eggs & miso and bolted. Fortunately for westerners the convenience stores are the backbone of Japanese life and many stock a very good bakery section. (Although it can be a bit of a mission working out what you are buying.) We had stocked up on snacks yesterday for a pre breakfast on the boat & I didn’t go out - so I'm having a raisin Danish, a kiwifruit & a banana. Perfect!
Oh what a shame - the wind is strong and has blown the sea ice out too far so this afternoons boat trip is canned. Excellent. The snow here is stunning light powder... on the street!
Today we briefly repeated the bird shoot & having just reviewed the images I am quite pleased with todays results. Especially as I was shooting with a (little) 70-200mm lens and not anything like the 500, 600 & 800mm beasts the others have. I have temporarily given up on the 100-400 lens but might give it another go tomorrow. As it's so cold you tend not to want to drink water but its also so dry the moisture is sucked out of you. Whereas in NZ you have pollen/allergy alerts on the weather site, here you have dry air warnings. At 8.30 we set off for Rausu, on the North East peninsula. You can see the Russian Islands from here, of course the Japanese say they are theirs! I could see many beautiful shots from the bus… it's an immutable law of travelling when you cannot stop. Another immutable law of travelling is that sooner or later everyone has an off day and today was mine. I flagged the afternoon boat trip to photograph eagles out on the sea ice. As many will know I'm not a good sailor so that was too big an ask for me today. I slept. Maybe tomorrow.  Feeding frenzy  White Tailed Eagle   The hills above our hotel in Rausu Nope I'm not up to it as a bird photog! Part of the problem is the lens I bought for this trip isn't quick enough or sharp enough. And I settled for that one as it weighed the least. A lot of these people have lenses that are 2 1/2 feet long - weighing in at 5 kilos. Anyway I'll keep practicing but its not my forte. Fortunately the breeze didn’t get up until about 9am & I picked a possie that was in the sun. Even so it was -8; -10 & the slightest breeze has an effect. I got a bit chilled despite wearing: long johns, warm pants & waterproof over pants, merino singlet, merino layer, thermacore layer, jersey, big coat with a puffer liner, 2 pairs gloves, merino/possum beanie + jacket hood. I also had heat packs in my boots and gloves. The heat packs are fantastic. But the ones in my boots were not very effective, apparently where I went wrong was not activating them while still in the hotel, now I'm back inside they have responded to the warmth and are working perfectly. They last between 8-10 hours & are sold at every convenience store & supermarket. When you are cold you tend to linger in the bathroom, the lure of a heated loo seat is not to be under estimated. There were probably about 50 photogs all lined up this morning with the machine gun rattle of motor drives going flat chat. Apparently this is the quietest place we will be for a bird shoot and where we go to shoot the famous cranes you have to fight for your spot. I didn't see any westerners other than our group. The Crows arrive first and then the Kites, followed by the White Tailed Eagles and lastly the mighty Stellar Sea Eagle. With a wing span averaging over 2 metres it is the heaviest eagle in the world & you can hear the thwack when it lands. A couple of foxes appeared and one was brave enough to walk right past the photogs within 4-5 feet. He was pretty awesome at stealing fish from the eagles and challenging them. Very cool to watch - I was barracking for the fox. He was out numbered, out weighed and out gunned (talons & beak) yet he persisted and got the prize several times. I had a fantastic shot of him standing up to an eagle with hooked wings but unfortunately it's not sharp. We went to a famous sushi place for lunch - OMG the food just kept coming. The raw fish was so fresh it melted in your mouth. We actually couldn’t eat it all and took it away but no one could face it. There are no homeless people in Nemuro (probably too cold) so we ended up giving it to the hotel staff. Japanese are very very particular about their sushi. No way was it going be kept for longer than 2-3 hours. It would be thrown out if not eaten. This afternoon we went out again and by chance saw a pair of cranes at the place we shot the eagles this morning. The bus screeched to a halt and we went back. They were amazingly close 4-5 feet at one point. Lucky lucky lucky. One of the tricks in managing the transfer of equipment in a very cold climate is to take batteries/cards out of your cameras while still outside and then do not open your bag again for several hours, leaving the gear to warm up slowly which prevents the condensation problem. Invariably there will be something you want out of your bag - Murphy's Law. Anyway I've got to get to bed earlier tonight as we leave at 5.30am tomorrow with all our bags. It's tough being a tourist sometimes :-)
We had to get up & out early as we were worried about lugging big bags + camera packs onto commuter trains. Yes they do still have those guys in uniforms pushing people onto trains. Major tip for avoiding check in queues: use the domestic check in counter at the international airport. Brilliant; there was no one there & they didn’t even bother weighing the bags - double brilliant. I know I have mentioned it before but I am struck every day that the Tokyo train system is so efficient and easy to navigate your way around. Shinjuku Station is the busiest railway station in the world with 3 mio people every day. Apparently the authorities have been gearing up for the 2020 Olympics; improving the English signage at the stations and also the announcements on the trains. The only train we had to be careful on was the mono rail to the airport as it didn’t announce stations. After a transit stop in Sapporo we eventually arrived in Nemuro, which is on a peninsula on the Eastern side of Hokkaido and it's very very cold. We had a big get together banquet tonight; 9 different dishes arrived for each person. I tasted them all except for the 'fish pudding' a custard made from fish, tofu, chicken & chestnut. An acquired taste I'm told. And while I tasted a tiny amount (before I knew what it was) I also passed on the raw squid/sea urchin combo and something else with sea urchin in it. The best was the crab sushi. These were those giant red crabs you see being fished through holes in the ice on nature docos. We are due to depart at 5.40am tomorrow at which time the temperature is forecast for -9 degrees with a wind chill taking it to -15. The aim of the game tomorrow is sea eagles, white tailed eagles & kites with maybe the odd fox thrown in. The locals hit on the idea of freezing chunks of fish in huge blocks which they chain saw into smaller pieces and then take it out into the frozen lake for the eagles providing shutter bait for any photographer stupid enough to stand out there in -15 temp. I am not a wild life photog so tomorrow will be interesting…
Today we reshot a few bits around the Shiodome and then took a train to Yanaka & visited the Cemetery & Nezu Shrine. It didn't seem as though we did a lot photographically but we went some distance and walked a long way. It was difficult to be creative today. The Nezu Shrine is similar to the one situated near Kyoto. Not having seen the original I'm not sure how this compares. Seems a bit small & insignificant after seeing the massive & beautiful Tori at the Meiji Shrine. We struggled a bit to find a restaurant tonight, trying to get into several places that didn’t seem to want us. No seats or no English menu. The little streets near our hotel are narrow and quirky with small or very small restaurants & bars. We ended up at a Japanese Italian restaurant for dinner & had a nice time; good food & we felt welcomed. Our waitress had been to NZ on a school trip and spent a week at on a dairy farm somewhere on the North Island - we couldn’t grasp where.
This morning we met up with Lukasz, a local photographer, who is brilliant at using reflections to create dynamic architecture images. We walked about with him for 2.5 hours and added another 1.5 before we got back to the totally hotel worn out. Its not the walking per se. It’s the mental work out looking for images and working out how best to create/capture/portray what you are seeing, plus walking around with heavy equipment. Great fun though! The temperature starts dropping around 2.30pm and makes it feel much later. Been lovely weather the past few days although cold by home standards ; 6-8 degrees & approx 1 overnight. I noticed its -3 in Hokkaido today so we need to toughen up smartish! Here are some of todays efforts...
OMG I've been looking at Stuff.
Hope you are all safe. Watching from a distance... and worrying :-( Tonight we went to a tiny hole in the wall restaurant that we'd seen packed with locals the last couple of days. Thought we'd be brave - but we nearly came undone. There was an English menu; by that I mean a 1 word description per item and the amount of English actually understood could be put on a postage stamp. Almost everything we recognised was sold out/or didn’t have any/or couldn't understand us so said sold out. What was left; tongue, cheek, flap, offal of every imaginable type, some stuff I didn’t understand even in English, and even pork rectum (I kid you not). I just wanted to leave but they had made an effort to accommodate us and it would have been extremely rude to depart at that point. Eventually we settled on skirt steak and some vegetables. A half pint tankard of sake was plonked in front of me which looked mighty scary until I realised it had been watered down with hot water. A good plan. The meat arrived for us to cook at the table, a tiny portion that wouldn't have fed 1 person at home & this was for 3. The potato salad turned out to be cold mashed potato sprinkled with something crispy. Kim, I imagine you are turning green at this point! It was different… but surprisingly tasty. The place grew more and more hectic… as people arrived they were greeted by roars of welcome from the staff and other diners. It was hilarious watching it all. And the meal was delicious if miniscule. In very short order we were made to understand it was time to go - obviously we were mucking up their schedule so our coats arrived beside us - subtlety seemingly irrelevant. This meal cost 3x the price of last nights and was about 1/3rd the size. But for all that, it was a great experience.
Today was more exploring… We have become quite comfortable using the local trains & went up to Harajuku in search of the girls that dress up like dolls but unfortunately we didn't strike it lucky. So the Meiji Shrine was the next stop. The Tori gates were magnificent - built from 1500 year old Japanese Cypress from Taiwan. Beautiful pieces of wood a massive 1.2 metres in diameter at the base. Apparently the barrels of sake represent generations of respectful offerings to Emperor Meiji. We also happened across several weddings in the shrine complex. In dire need of a bit of a sit down we stopped so Judy could try food from a street vendor. While "Dango" looks like giant marshmallows being toasted, it is not. Imagine glue coated in sweet salty soy sauce. Definitely different. Sunday is obviously the day off for the majority of the population and every one was out to enjoy the nice day. We wandered down the road among the throngs of people & came across Tokyu Plaza which was a definite on my must do list. Essentially its just another shopping plaza but for photogs the draw card is the weird reflective architecture on the entrance. The panels are mirrored allowing all manner of abstract images. Bliss. Another train ride back to Shimbashi and we had dinner at a tiny place only frequented by locals. Tempura washed down with Kirrin beer - all for $10. And to finish I'll just add to the "toilet tales"... after having lunch in Tokyu PLaza we took the opportunity for a comfort stop while we could. OMG I thought the line looked long but was in for a Big shock. From where we could see it (and that was not the beginning) It went around the corner through a door down the fire escape to the first landing - I kid you not. It took us 20 minutes to reach the loo. The only reason we persevered was suspecting it would only be worse elsewhere. So having undergone that experience, I suddenly noticed that there were queues of women at public conveniences everywhere. And... there were also large groups of men… all having to hang about waiting for their women.
I forgot to mention the toilets…. they are a technological wonder.
I was too tired last night to bother trying to work out the one in my room... seriously, you need an instruction manual. The first surprise was to sit on a heated toilet seat... oooh… lovely. And a public loo we visited on our walkabout was pristine, almost beautiful. I'm not sure if the waterfall music was to encourage you to pee or hide the fact that you were. A person with whom I am travelling and who shall remain nameless, tried to push the flush button and ended up being squirted but couldn’t work out how to make the water stop so was stuck there unable to move until the realization dawned that you do have to stop the water flow. So far I've not been brave enough to push any buttons. You don’t really need to… the lid lifts when you walk in, the music starts when you sit down and it flushes all by itself when you stand up. Magic. We're heeeeeere. We arrived at 7am after a pretty much sleepless night. Yes premium economy was great. It's a pity I'm such a bad traveller - I get to be sick irrespective of what flash seat I'm in! The quality of care us better in PE though! A lot of people here speak English – but it's heavily accented so it can be a bit tricky working out what is being said. The tourist helpers at the airport and train station were brilliant – exceptionally good English and the trains were reasonably easy to navigate thanks to William's homework. It’s been a tough day – we arrived around 7am and were at the hotel by 8.15ish but they wouldn't let us check in until 3pm. Them’s the rules & they are NOT going to be broken. By 2pm we'd completely had enough walking around and were staging a sit in occupying the only 2 chairs in the tiny lobby. Eventually the staff got fed up with us sitting there yawning and cluttering up the place so we were offered a price of Y1,000/$12 to check in 40 minutes early. I took it. I always knew space is at a premium here and that my room would be small but I'm sure there are pampered dogs with bigger kennels. With the exception of the shower, my bathroom is only inches bigger that the one in premium economy. But and it’s a big but... it does have a deep dish tub under the shower. I can sit in it with knees up and the water comes up to my shoulders. And the water is scalding hot. All is forgiven. Funnily enough I'm meant to be having a sleep now - but now I'm too wired. So here are some photos from our first interaction with Tokyo.
OMG I hate packing - I am utterly utterly useless at it, each time I think I've nailed the weight issue....nope... still too heavy.
As a big treat I'm getting to fly premium economy from Auckland to Tokyo. I realise there are many of you out there that travel this way as a matter of course. Unfortunately I'm not one - so this is very special. I can't sleep on planes and don't travel well either so hopefully it will mean I land a bit more rested than usual. Can someone please develop a safe system where I can be knocked out and woken on arrival at destination - that would be perfect! Beam me sideways Scottie! |
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