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4Article first published on Aug. 29, 2015. One of the hard disks on my Desktop PC failed (probably due to heat), the one with all my data which was the Linux /home partition. To make matters worse, after buying a new HDD and installing Fedora Linux, by mistake during the installation process I deleted the main backup of that data which was on the second hard disk!! I could only … Continue reading →
On January 13, 2011, I attended a traditional local ceremony at Shiratama waterfall in Niigata Prefecture. I’ve been to this waterfall several times in the summer to escape the heat, but this is the first time to see it in the snowy mid winter, and the very first time to see people stand under it! It’s actually a religious ceremony called misogi. Misogi (禊) is a Japanese mountain ascetic practice … Continue reading →
I took these photos in 2008. They were on my old website which is no longer on line, and so I’m re-posting them.
Continue reading →On July 31 1996, Yanek from Belarus, Angela from St. Petersburg and I traveled overland by bus from Murmansk to the remote village of Teriberka. We went to visit our friend Marina who was a student we met in Murmansk. These two areas are circled in red on the map below. The distance is a bit more than 100 KM or 60 miles, but it took 5 hours by bus … Continue reading →
I lived in St. Petersburg, Russia, from August of 1994 to October of 1997. It was known as Leningrad during the time of the Soviet Union. Many people who don’t live in St. Petersburg still call it Leningrad! At least they did during my stay in Russia. But I don’t remember a resident of St. Petersburg refer to it by the Soviet name. They are proud of their pre-Soviet history … Continue reading →
I went by bicycle to a park an hour from home and took the photos below with a Nikon D50 camera (not mine) and a tripod (mine) with slow shutter speeds as slow as 5 seconds.
Continue reading →Today was cloudy when I started out on my journey to Aomori city, 470 kilometers from home. I wore for the first time this season a warm overcoat. I heard it had been snowing in Aomori, the northernmost prefecture of Honshu. At 8:05 a.m. after walking 25 minutes on Route 345 from Majime station, the first car of the day stopped for me. It was again Mr. Toki, a cook … Continue reading →
During my cycling trip to the summit of Mt. Yahiko in Niigata Prefecture, I stopped at the Yahiko Shrine which was on the way. I didn’t know it before hand, but it was the time of the annual chrysanthemum festival. There were lots of visitors, probably more than usual.
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3November 19, 2012: It was a bright sunny day and I didn’t want to spend it indoors in front of a PC screen. Instead I rode my bicycle to a village at the foothills of Mt. Yahiko, about 33 kilometers from home, and walked to the top, the very summit of Yahiko Mountain which is 634 meters above sea level. It took me 2 hours to ride to Yahiko Village … Continue reading →
This is a photo I took of my little girl, Lily, then 4 years old, when we lived in Kamakura city Kanagawa prefecture. The photo is on the Shonan coast, near Inamuragasaki. I was taken with black and white film, and developed and printed personally by me. Back in those days I did a lot of B/W photography with my 35 MM Minolta SLR, and had the availability of a … Continue reading →
Mt. Yahiko and Mt. Kakuda from a distance of 20 kilometers. I enjoy taking long bicycle trips from time to time. I thought it would be a good day’s challenge to circle two famous mountains of Niigata, Mt. Kakuda and Mt. Yahiko, and return home before nightfall. Mt. Kakuda and Mt. Yahiko are not famous for their height. Mt. Yahiko is only 600 some meters high. They are famous for … Continue reading →
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2The photos below shows bamboo trees bent over with the tops stuck in the snow! The snow causes the trees to bend over till the top of the tree touches the snow on the ground. Further snow buries the top branches tying the top of the tree to the ground, and it will stay like that until enough snow on the ground melts, even though the original snow that bent … Continue reading →
My friend Daniel sent me this photo of him with Gary Sinise, the actor who played Lt. Dan in the film “Forest Gump”! He seems to be a really nice guy to pose for a photo with one of his fans. I learned that Gary was born in Blue Island Illinois which is only 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) from where I was raised in Hegewisch, a neighborhood of Chicago.
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