Japan

For the last week, while Brandon has been busy getting his sister married off in Nashville, I have been visiting my parents in Aizuwakamatsu, Japan in Fukushima prefecture for the holidays. They will be living here for about a year because my dad is working here at the moment. It is a pretty small town, with a population of about 100,000, so there isn’t much to do except eat! I love all the food I have eaten so far. The weirdest thing I’ve eaten are these little fried dough balls with a bit of octopus tentacle hidden in the middle. They make and sell these at little stalls inside the mall, as a kind of junk food. Here are a few pictures of some of my favorite meals.

The last one is actually Vietnamese food, but the lady who owns the shop where we ate it speaks Japanese so I think it still counts. As you can probably tell, I like eating things from lots of smaller containers for some reason.

After the new year, I will be traveling across the middle of Japan (to Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kyoto) by train with my siblings.

To those nice nice nights…

On December 9th it was Emma’s birthday.  Our waiter at the diner that night shoved a handful of whipped cream in her face.

Not Now, Not Ever

I really love this collection of photos, from Gayla Trail:

 http://www.fluffco.com/not-now-not-ever

“… My photos are often described as capturing a feeling of isolation, and while that is there, I am also interested in exploring a contemplative form of solitude or most especially public solitude of the kind one would feel when walking down a street alone or that feeling you get while sitting on a street curb contemplating a crack in the sidewalk as the world passes by. Sometimes those moments are sad and express a withdrawal from the social world but they are also tender moments of aloneness that we all experience at one time or another…”

When I take photos sometimes, this is what I aim for.