メリークリスマス!

Nick,

So there are fewer than 10 days to my personal Californian advent calendar, but I’m trying not to get too excited. If I let myself think about it too much I’ll start packing, and if I start packing I’ll be living out of my luggage next week. Then again, it couldn’t hurt to start packing as 80% of what I’ll be bringing back is omiyage and Christmas presents. With everything I’m bringing I may just have to check my luggage at this point.


Well, as you pretty much guessed, in between the space of these two paragraphs was all the time it took me to break down and start packing. As of today, I pretty much fit all of my omiyage into one carry-on-able bag, though I cannot yet tell you where I will store my clothes… Maybe I’ll just wear them all onto the plane

¹ They tell me that, when in Japan, I should “layer”…

¹.

But all of this is fine. I’ll have plenty of time to think about it.

Since finals were last week, we’re all pretty much in a holding pattern. The schedule is generous to the teachers as they have two whole weeks to turn in grade reports. Being the pseudo-repressive Type-A that I am, I had my grade sheets tabulated and my formulas ready to go last Thursday so I could dump the digits in on Friday and have nice little cut-outs for the teachers ready by Monday.

Suffice it to say that the last couple of days have been pretty chill in the office

² Since I’m already done with my grading I’ve done more wristwatch shopping (A, B) than actual teaching or grading over the last two days… which isn’t to say that I’ve been completely unproductive…

², so Ken and I are trying to be proactive in getting out of the office and engaging students.

Oh, yeah: speaking of “chill”… though high temperatures this year had lingered late into October, it has already sharply downshifted into winter; this weekend we’re told to expect our first sub-0 temps. Just in time for Christmas.

For the most part, autumn was all about posturing myself for the winter: the kerosene heaters, term finals for course placement, prepping for the first round of university exams, and the big pre-Christmas sales on winter jackets, thermals and home insulation. Fortunately for me, though, I have a tendency to plan ahead. By mid-November my rugs were laid out, my windows sealed and sheeted, and my thermals unpacked. Looking ahead has never really been my problem. Even now as I start to prepare for my flight out to Torrance, it’s remembering to not forget about today that’s the harder part.

And perhaps that’s the trick of living any place, let alone in a place like Japan: to remember to look around as I continue to look ahead. To remember to taste of the bright seasonal fruits and flavors before they pass into a starker hue. To remember to drink in the luxurious fall colors, bask in the lingering warmth of the autumn sun before it drifts away into the high, winter sky. To remember to share a smile at the bus stop before those too disappear behind masks and scarves.

Though the threat of 0° weather is a tad… prohibitive.

Roppongi (六本木)

We had been looking at the forecast for the weekend every day at work and, despite the bleak report, I had promised myself that I wouldn’t spend the entire weekend locked up in my heat-hovel. And after waking up at the casual hour of 10am--and only after a furious amount of Googling and japan-guide.com--I had decided to take a half-day trip into Tokyo to cross off a few more sites on my “Tourist” Bingo card by going to Roppongi and seeing

³ ”See,” not “go up,” as I was advised (repeatedly).

³ the Tokyo Tower.

Ultimately, my plan was to walk around the base of the tower and its surrounding parks and shrine and leave with enough time to make it to the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower observation deck for sunset, which was scheduled for about 4:29¥pm. I got there at around 3:00 and paid my ¥$15 to ride the elevator up the 52-stories to the observation rotunda. It was quite an amazing view and I was glad that I brought my widest lens

⁴11-16mm Tokina.

⁴, but was instantly met with a huge problem: as the sun sets only once per day, do I park myself at the east-facing window, towards Tokyo Tower and Odaiba, or do I settle in on one of the benches on the west-side of the tower, to watch the sun set behind (literally behind, today) Mt. Fuji.


I walked around the tower twice before coming to the realization that the photographic opportunities favored heavily the east-facing side as shooting into the sun is not as amazing as it would sound, at least not until the sun passes behind the mountain. Also, preliminary shots revealed that my lens was too wide, and Fuji-san too far to obtain dramatic Fuji-themed images.


So the limitations of my equipment

⁵Re: “skill.”

⁵ dictated the terms of my shooting. At a little after 3:20, I carved out a little spot right by the window and set up for some short-term sequential shooting. Then, from about 3:58 to just shy of 5:15, I snapped up 146 shots at just-about-30-second intervals. For a first-try at time-lapse, stop-motion photography, it’s not bad. But even now I can see a half-dozen things I would do differently: there are glare-artifacts due to inadequate sealing against super-thick double-pane windows; there are exposure shifts (amateur!); and I’m not using a professional-grade compiler, so there’s considerable dithering most notable after dusk.


Even after all that I still like it. It really helps add a whole level of “texture” that mere stills fail to convey.

As always, the rest of my Roppongi images can be found on my flickr.