Year in Review
2019 has come to an end, and with it the yearly round up in photographic form. My photographic adventures this year have been more intense perhaps but less frequent than last year, mainly because I have been doing thesis work a lot; that takes a lot of time (unsurprisingly!)
On that note, I have three weeks left before I submit the final version, and then in four weeks I will be doing my thesis defence; after that I have a couple of months off in which to relax and have adventures again - something I am sorely looking forward to!
2019 started off in Shibuya Scramble with a few friends, getting blitzed with champagne in the streets and the general atmosphere. This year the scramble is alcohol free (as was Halloween), so I cannot imagine the partying being quite so intense. If they continue to do so I can say I was among the last dusty partygoers in Shibuya (what a claim)....
January was a relatively quiet month; most people went home, which left me a lot of time to work through over a hundred academic journals to decide my research topic and basis of my thesis. This coming January will be the finishing up of the thesis, so next New Year (2021) I will be looking to become something of a loose unit ;)
I met up with my good friend Varun, another exchange student companion of mine from 2011. We met up in late 2017 as well, and I believe he is coming back here sometime in the first quarter of 2020, so very much looking forward to catching him once more - someone with whom to talk politics and international relations again, bliss!
My friend Andrew came to visit in February, providing me the first of my "People Come To Stand Next To A Statue Of A Dog With Me" collection for 2019.
While Andrew was out of Tokyo on his adventures, Claire and I went to the art island of Naoshima, famous for having a lot of Tadao Ando architecture and Yayoi Kusama polka-dotted pumpkins. It gave me a newfound appreciation for Japanese art, and was a welcome break from the hustle of the city - I could see stars decently for the first time in months! I'm still not completely convinced by Ando's architecture though, the amount of concrete he uses must have a carbon footprint equal to that of Fiji or some other mid-sized Pacific island state!
February was also my first trip of two to Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures, which were both devastated in the 2011 tsunami. It reminded me a lot of walking through Christchurch, which itself was levelled in 2011 by an earthquake. Rikuzentakata, one of the towns that was pretty well wiped off the map, and famous for having one tree remaining of a 70,000 strong coastal pine forest, is in the midst of a recovery, though knowing what the predictions are for its population demographics, part of me cannot help but wonder why they are bothering....
Then in March came my friend Perry, adding a second piece to my "People Come To Stand Next To A Statue Of A Dog With Me" collection.
Perry's trip here was purely Tokyo focussed, meaning we went out and about to a lot of places, including a day trip to Kawaguchiko, right next to Mt Fuji. This took us to the Lonely Planet Pagoda (look at any guidebook and you'll likely see it on the cover). We also went beneath the base of Mt Fuji to the Narusawa Icecaves, which true to name were very icey and ethereal.
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| At the summit of Mt Takao, the highest in Tokyo |
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| A trip to the zoo also happened, crossing that off my list of things to do here |
I had the opportunity to fly to Kyushu for a day to give a seminar on international student life at a high school in Sendai city (not the famous Sendai city that was affected by tsunami/earthquake in 2011 though). There were few photographic opportunities, but I was able to visit the museum dedicated to the people who started the momentum for Japan's modernisation, as well as the statue of the first Japanese students to be sent abroad to travel the world and bring lessons back to Japan.
In March I was able to go to Hawai'i as a teaching assistant for a UTokyo course at the University of Hawai'i Manoa. This was an awesome opportunity and shout out to Yuki Hirose of UTokyo for letting me come along - I was very grateful to be back in Polynesia for a week and have a climate more to my taste. Also visiting Pearl Harbor was a profound experience, not only because I was there with a bunch of Japanese with all the history there, but also because I love WWII aircraft and the place is full of it. Getting to tour the USS Missouri was great too, an absolute titan of a vessel. From my brief tenure as a staff member of the University of Hawai'i (I have the ID to prove it) I can say I am a diehard fan of the Warriors (their football team), and according to Claire when I wear the uni shirt I look like an American - which is a good thing given I'm going to marry one!
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| Was well excited to see a real yellow schoolbus - I felt like I was in a stereotypical movie |
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| Go Warriors! |
Unfortunately my trusty Canon EOS 5D MkIII died at the end of this trip due to a faulty clip on my backpack and a brittle based water bottle, so for almost half the year I was camera-less. This had a profound impact on me given how much of a passion I have for photography, and so I was very lucky to be able to use Claire's mirrorless Fujifilm camera when I needed it - hugely appreciated.
My trip to Hawai'i was smack bang in the middle of a visit by my parents and grandmothers, plus a family friend. Fortunately they were in Kyoto at the time rather than Tokyo, so no major clash (I was asked to go back to Hawai'i this coming March but this time it clashes with my graduation, damnit). It was great to see everyone though, and add another photo to the "People Come To Stand Next To A Statue Of A Dog With Me" collection. Their timing was very good for the extended Cherry Blossom season, which is something mum in particular has been wanting to see for a very long time (she has also crossed off the autumnal leaves in a previous trip, meaning the only season she is yet to properly experience is summer - not recommended I think)
April was a fairly quiet month, with two main events. Firstly there was the visit of my friend and former coworker Chloe visiting, which added to the "People Come To Stand Next To A Statue Of A Dog With Me" collection.
Secondly there was the Kanamara Penis Festival in Kawasaki - I visited this last year too but Claire missed out, so I was more than happy to come again. We were surprised to see James May of Top Gear/Grand Tour fame filming part of his Amazon TV series there - I got within about 10 metres of the man which was my celeb moment of the year.
Into May came Golden Week - the period of multiple public holidays banging into each other, giving an extended time off for everyone. Given that everywhere is super crowded, as with last year Claire and I decided to do a number of day trips instead of managing the impossible crowds of Kyoto, Osaka or Kanazawa - how wise we are! This took us to Gunma prefecture an hour by bullet train north from Tokyo, where one of my Victoria University classmates, Jasper, lives with his wife, Ayumi. They were very generous in hosting us for a couple of nights and showing us around. A highlight was visiting a daruma shrine - these are red head "toys" that are weighted so as to keep their balance and right themselves if toppled. You draw an eye on it when you get one, and make a wish - when the wish is fulfilled you draw the other eye, and at this shrine the custom is to return them so they may be burned and "returned" to heaven. We also visited a giant Canon statue (Buddhist guardian deity), which paralleled last year's Golden Week visit to Ushiku Buddha (this one didn't have as extensive a shop inside the Buddha though which was likely a good thing)
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| Claire and I with the Japanese Alps in the distance |
Another trip was to Nokogiriyama, literally saw-tooth mountain, which had been on my "to climb" list for a while. We did this with our friends Katya and Fiodar, saw some jizo (little stone statues used in Buddhism for a variety of reasons), as well as a giant Buddha. The site is also the place where a Top Gear special episode concluded, and so I stood where Jeremy Clarkson once stood, bringing my Top Gear connections to 2/3 the main cast - one day Hammond, one day!
Later on I joined Claire in the United States, where she had been for her brother's graduation. This coincided with the wedding of one of her cousins, and so I went to Chicago firstly to spend some time with her family and revisit the city, before going to San Diego for the wedding. Chicago is absolutely my favourite city in the US (admittedly I haven't been to many, but it sets a high bar) - Claire was a very good host showing me around the city, taking me on an architectural boat cruise, and introducing me to some of her favourite haunts.
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| Experiencing the highly touted cinnamon rolls at Ann Sather, one of Claire's favourite breakfast cafes - no way could I eat both so I gave one to a homeless guy |
San Diego I can say is my second favourite city in the US (again, admittedly not coming from a huge number). It has a very different vibe to Chicago, being so close to Mexico, and the architecture has a huge Spanish influence which I have very few opportunities to see in New Zealand (or Japan). On our free day before the wedding I went with the "horde", as Claire's mum puts it (the Krentz family is a big one indeed) to the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier that is a permanent museum much like the Missouri. To visit two capital ships in as many months was awesome, especially given New Zealand will never in a million years have anything like it. Thanks to Claire for tolerating my excitement at seeing all the planes and asking lots of questions to the guides (and for sitting in a F14 Tomcat with me)
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| Also joined in the family portrait, the most American I have ever felt I think! |
The wedding itself was very nice, and an opportunity to meet Claire's family more one-on-one. We partied on into the night, on a lovely backdrop of the Pacific Ocean and the sunset, and everyone had a great time.
Big thanks to all of Claire's family welcoming me into their ranks, and for all of their congratulations for the engagement - I am very much looking forward to getting to know them all in the coming years!
July was also the time of the summer cocktail party, a half year occurance that David Viktor and myself put on, which was a good success - lots of fruity cocktails coupled with Palauan BBQ
In late July and early August Dad visited me for a couple of weeks of adventuring. This was peak summer where the real feel was often well above 40 degrees celcius, an unprecedented level that is increasingly becoming the norm (and people say climate change is a hoax). Dad's mission was to climb Mt Fuji, something I did last year with Viktor. Claire also had not climbed it, so the three of us set about to conquer the Mountain (or in the words of Sir Edmund Hillary, to conquer ourselves). The climb was about the same experience as last time, and based upon my experience from the first time, our time management was far better. We made it to the summit in good time for the sunrise and walked the crater perimeter to be atop the highest point of the mountain - once again I was the highest person in Japan, if only for a few moments. The Japanese say that everyone should climb it once, but only a fool climbs it twice - I agree with this wholeheartedly, though I think I will do it at least once more to say that I have climbed it three times, which has a good ring to it.
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| At the highest point with our Asahi beers (Asahi meaning morning sun in Japanese) |
The week before Fuji (as something of a training run) Dad and I flew to Yakushima, an island in the far far south of Japan. It is a heavily forested place, with almost half of it being UNESCO/other protected forest, and the southermost place to find Japanese deer and monkeys. The place is full of hikes and trekking, with a very popular one being the Jomon-sugi trail, a relatively gruelling hike that can take up to 12 hours return, to see a particularly old cedar tree, estimated to be up to 7,000 years old. The tree itself cannot be approached up close, but we saw a model of the base of it at the museum, and it would take 10 adults with outstretched arms to wrap around it. The trek itself was harder than Fuji; given the latter is a far more groomed track, and despite there being far fewer people on this one, we were far more physically tired by this one than Fuji. We also did it at a great rate of knots, being in the second group to depart at around 6.30am, and then getting back well before 2.30, making us the sixth and seventh to return.
Yakushima was a magical place, and much like Naoshima it has a very pleasant vibe to it - completely the opposite of Tokyo. It was a very much needed escape from the big cities, and while we did not swim, we were able to walk along the beach and smell the salt air, which I do not get nearly as often as I would like to.
Thanks for coming to visit Dad and making it a fun summer, I think you agree that the Japanese summer is unlike anything you had experienced before (I did warn him...)
My birthday involved going to a Star Wars exhibition, so I had a great time nerding out at all the original costumes and props - thanks for tolerating that Claire!
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| Meeting Yoda |
Dad's trip also coincided with the arrival of my new camera, the Canon EOS R, which I have had a lot of fun getting to know, and put to good use on the next big adventure - going to Kyiv in Ukraine
Claire's uncle and aunt were living in Kyiv for six months for a work project, and they invited us to stay with them for a week during the summer break. We figured it would be an awesome opportunity, as Kyiv is not, for us at least, the first place that comes to mind as a tourist destination. I am very pleased to say that my expectations of Kyiv as a grey and Soviet style place with lots of concrete brutalism were unfounded, and that Kyiv is a bustling and vibrant place with a lot of colour and culture. Ukraine is going through a period of transition following their 2014 revolution and the current hostilities/war with Russia, so there was a very strong sense of militarism/patriotism, and as a tourist destination I think it is only just emerging, much like Burma/Myanmar is for South East Asia at the moment. Accordingly, I didn't feel like we were part of a horde of tourists (also that we are caucasian meant we blended in more with the locals than we do in Japan), and it was nice to get some European flair as a change from Japan.
I particularly enjoyed the military history aspect of the trip too, as the USSR side of things is underrepresented in the West, so to see the Great Patriotic War (WWII to Russians/Ukrainians etc) musuem was significant. This also involved a lot of Soviet tanks that I had never seen before, which was awesome.
Being Europe, there were also a lot of churches, crypts, cathedrals, cafes, etc., which was nice too - being Orthodox they are of a totally different style to what I think of in churches, a whole lot of gold and icons.
It was also an opportunity to meet my friend Andrew/Andri, a Ukrainian who I went to university in New Zealand with. He is now an airline pilot (complete departure from our studies at VUW), and so to see him for the first time in almost 5 years to the day was great. He took me first to an aircraft museum (which I loved), and then when we reconnected with Claire, showed us around on a whirlwind tour of the city, and joined us all for dinner at the end of the day.
I have never been to a concentration camp such as you'd see in Poland or Germany, but Kyiv has a massacre site from the Holocause called Babi Yar, which was the location of one of the biggest mass executions of the Holocaust. Felt this was an important place to visit, even if it was a heavy place, and I was quite happy to see in the park many families playing, squirrels frolicking, and some levity in the air. This was juxtaposed by the many statues that commemorated different groups of executed people, and an important demonstration of reclaiming horrific sites while not forgetting their significance.
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| Sculpture for all the tens of thousands who were executed in a matter of days at Babi Yar |
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| Squirrel! |
Kyiv also played host to an awesome Cossack dance show by one of the top troupes in Ukraine, so Claire and I went along with her aunt and uncle - I was very surprised that people were taking photos throughout, and so in the second half I quite happily joined in and took some of my favourite shots of the trip
Kyiv was a great experience, with delicious food, happy people, lots of colour and culture, and so I am very grateful to Dean and Mihoko for helping make it happen!
In September I returned to Iwate with my study group, to look at the same places we went to in February (I was a bit irritated at my classmates for organising a trip that mirrored something I had already done, which was very similar to my last year's study trip - bad luck me), but it was nice to see the place outside of the grey grimness of winter. We all stayed with local host families which was pleasant, rather than some grim hotel as last time, and my host parents had a keen interest in flying which provided hours of discussion.
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| These stone statues are carved by people who lost family members in Rikuzentakata, as part of a cathartic artistic expression of grief, and are standing at the entrance to one of the last remaning shrines there. |
Claire's parents also visited in September for her birthday, and we met up at the TeamLab Planets digital art installation (a smaller and wetter version of the more well known TeamLab Borderless museum), followed by a nice dinner at a meat restaurant. Thanks again to Scott and Susie for welcoming me into their family so warmly!
The Rugby World Cup was in Japan this year, as something of a rehearsal for the Olympics. Unfortunately the All Black tickets were snapped up quick fast, but with our friends Carmina and Garreth, Claire and I headed to Shizuoka for a weekend to watch South Africa play Italy in the pool matches. We went to a number of bars to watch other games as they played out, and watched the final at our South African friend's apartment (where South African defeated England well and truly). It was a good tournament to be in Tokyo for, and never have I heard so many Kiwi accents in Tokyo at one time !
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| With Carmina and Garreth at Shizuoka Castle |
Claire and I went to a couple of other less popular spots in Tokyo over this time, to see what we could see. There was the hidden Buddha statue in a contemporary vertical cemetery in Ikebukuro, and the secret alleys of Kagurazaka (which hide some very nice bars and boutiques also)
Into November there were odd little adventures around the city - by this point I was well into my thesis draft(s) so I wasn't able to go out quite as much. Nevertheless, we went to the new skyscraper in Shibuya with its rooftop observation deck, Shibuya Sky - which is also where Claire officially proposed to me (having done so once already on top of Mt Fuji - but that's another story)
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| Was a great place for sunset panoramas |
My friend from university, Hannah, and her partner Josh also visited Japan at this time, which meant I got another addition to my "People Come To Stand Next To A Statue Of A Dog With Me" collection.
I went a wooly mammoth exhibition to see some permafrosted specimens, and was able to touch actual mammoth hair; that was a surreal experience. Seeing all these fossils took me back to my childhood when I wanted to become a paleontologist with all my being.
I also got to see some more autumnal leaves, this time primarily at my university campus, Hongo, which is famous for its golden gingko leaves - hordes of tourists come to take photos (I felt I was blurring lines as a tourist taking photos but also as a genuine student there). Another visit was made to a museum, this time the National Art Center to see some insanely expensive and intricate Cartier jewellery - one of the pieces I couldn't photograph was a Russian tiara made in 1908 - I imagined that it was smuggled out of the crumbling Russian Empire in 1917-1920 by some fleeing White Russians or deposed aristocrat. All very pretty stuff though, and crazy to think people would wear them!
It was at this time that Claire finally got a ring on her finger for the engagement (we decided to go and get one together, that way it would 100% be something to her taste), and then we were able to go public, having been engaged secretly for over a month by that point. Many thanks to everyone who has and continue to offer congratulations to us, wedding plans will start to be considered once I graduate (thesis on the brain...)
The engagement announcement also coincided with me getting something I've talked about getting for a long time - a caricature! Crossed that off the list :D
The week before Christmas, our dormitory offered a study trip to Odawara in Kanagawa Prefecture; a place very close to where I used to live, but never managed to get to. It wasn't a terribly photographic day trip, but I went to Odawara castle which had been on my to go to list in 2011 - ultimately maybe not worth it, but the trip was free so who am I to complain??
We had our Christmas cocktail party the weekend before Christmas, a nice way to celebrate the end of the year with friends, and enjoy a julep or G&T or two (or three).
Christmas was a more intimate affair this year, with just the immediate Tokyo "family" gathering for a potluck lunch/dinner. For Christmas Eve Claire and I went to a church for a Christmas service, with lots of carols and so on, and then to a New Zealand restaurant in the middle of the city - having NZ lamb and salmon paired with a bottle of Pinot Noir (from Marlborough of all places - NZers will understand this not to be the usual Pinot place) was a treat and made me pine for home.
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| Mirroring last year's Christmas shot |
In this final week of December I have largely been indoors working on thesis stuff, but on Saturday evening I emerged to go to the beach to watch the fireworks - a welcome distraction to be sure!
Tonight's plan is to go to David's with Viktor, bring a bottle of gin and make ourselves G&Ts into the 2020s - nothing quite so intense as last year, but as I mentioned Shibuya is perhaps not as festive as last year so I'm not missing out on much!
This year has been a good one, with plenty of people visiting me and me getting to visit many places. I like to think I've been pretty diligent in my research, concretely determining a topic in April, conducting my interviews throughout April to mid-July, and then churning out a thesis draft every month since August. There's still a bit to go, and now in the final weeks motivation is at an all time low given the time of year and hearing about all the summertime fun that's going on back home. I am looking forward to January being over so I may put the thesis and defence behind me, after which I will have February and March to enjoy myself - Claire and I are going to New Zealand in Feb for the wedding of one of my friends, and I'm planning to get in a good amount of time at the beach and feel the sand between my toes.
I have learnt a lot, seen a lot, made new friends, gained some useful experience, and most significantly for me, gained a whole new family through Claire, which I think is pretty special. I'm looking forward to the adventures we will share together, and for what 2020 brings! Huge thanks to everyone who's had any sort of positive impact on me this year, kept me on the straight and narrow, taught me things, made me laugh, read my seemingly endless thesis drafts (Mum will be equally deserving of my Master's degree) etc., etc.
Wishing everyone a safe and happy 2020, and stick around to see what happens in Tokyo in the coming weeks and months!
Til then, stay frosty (easy to do in Tokyo where temps are around 5C)
What a year you have had. And big milestones to come too!! Looking forward to seeing you soon and meeting Claire. I am very fond of her already!! Love Nan
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