Carpe Diem

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I’ve taken the past few months off of social media and blogging to digitally detox a bit. I’ve continued to shoot and built up a nice backlog of images so let me catch you up with my life…visually.
Today’s Configuration: Leica M10 w/ a Summicron 28mm f/2.0, Summilux 35mm f/1.4 and Summilux 50mm f/1.4
My friend Steve came to visit us for a weekend. It’s always good to see Steve.
Just 4 short kilometers from my house is Tamagawa Bike Path. You can go for something like 80 kilometers. Beautiful scenery in every direction. Lots of flowers growing along the river. Nice little temples are hidden away. One day I even went through a second where what seemed like 100 black butterflies were born. They were flying everywhere and a few that were waiting for their wings to dry after being born were kind enough to pose for a photograph.
One of my first long rides I made it to Haneda Airport. Only the second time I’ve been to the airport this year. Did you know there were these huge Torii Gates there?
This is a beautiful little garden off the back of our room.
We saw these beautiful summer houses up in Karuizawa while out on a walk. Beautiful and crazy expensive. Another fun getaway about 180 kilometers north of Tokyo. This town became famous as John Lennon lived here with Yoko Ono for a while.
I captured this image on another trip up to Karuizawa. I had to pull over and take this shot. The scene was just too beautiful. There an amazing grocery store in Karuizawa where you can buy all sorts of local fruits, vegetables, meats and more. It’s worth the day trip just for the grocery shopping. I wish I saw the shadow of the torii gates in my framing and I would have taken a few steps back to capture all of it in the image.
Thanks for stopping by today!

Into the Mountains

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I hope you, your family, and friends are doing well in these crazy times. I had been training for the All Japan Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Masters Tournament on March 1st. This was going to be my 1st tournament. I had completed all of my training and was resting for a few days prior to the tournament. I was training up to 14 times a week between my classes and supplemental workouts at the gym. I was going to be competing in the Master 4 82.3 KG and Master 4 Open Classes. A few days before they ended up canceling the tournament due to the spread of COVID-19. A few weeks later Japan declared a state of emergency and my gym closed for a few months. I’m holding off on going back to training until there is a vaccine for COVID-19. I have asthma and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is the direct opposite of Social Distancing. It’s not worth the risk for me.

I’ve been working from home since mid-March. I haven’t ridden a train or subway since then either. For the most part, I’ve been living on Zoom 8-10 hours a day. I have been traveling around 200,000 miles a year, typically several flights a month. It’s quite a change to be home all the time. It’s great to be able to spend more time with my family. The great benefit of working from home is I don’t have a door to door commute of 45 minutes or so. I don’t have the normal distractions in the office. So I get back 1.5 hours of commuting and an hour or two of office interruptions. I have so much time back in my life each day. It’s easier to do things before work and after work before dinner. I find myself super productive during the day and appreciate the extra time for my hobbies and my family.

It’s been a huge change from training in Jiu-Jitsu all the time to doing nothing each day. After a few months of that, I ended up buying a single-speed bicycle with a perk allowance my company provides so i could start exercises again.

Like most things I do, this hobby quickly escalates as you’ll see. I kept calling my good friend John Hall I went deeper down the rabbit hole for advice to keep me balanced. Wait a minute. Come to think of it, he is the same person I called when I thinking of a new camera or lens and his standard response is ‘why not, go for it!’. Maybe he is not the best person to call…

Today’s Configuration: Leica M10-P, Leica M-11 and iPhone.
I started off by exploring the neighborhoods around me. I found this beautiful Lotus blooming just a few blocks from my house at a temple…
Just 4 short kilometers from my house is Tamagawa Bike Path. You can go for something like 80 kilometers. Beautiful scenery in every direction. Lots of flowers growing along the river. Nice little temples are hidden away. One day I even went through a second where what seemed like 100 black butterflies were born. They were flying everywhere and a few that were waiting for their wings to dry after being born were kind enough to pose for a photograph.
One of my first long rides I made it to Haneda Airport. Only the second time I’ve been to the airport this year. Did you know there were these huge Torii Gates there?
This is a beautiful little garden off the back of our room.
We saw these beautiful summer houses up in Karuizawa while out on a walk. Beautiful and crazy expensive. Another fun getaway about 180 kilometers north of Tokyo. This town became famous as John Lennon lived here with Yoko Ono for a while.
I captured this image on another trip up to Karuizawa. I had to pull over and take this shot. The scene was just too beautiful. There an amazing grocery store in Karuizawa where you can buy all sorts of local fruits, vegetables, meats and more. It’s worth the day trip just for the grocery shopping. I wish I saw the shadow of the torii gates in my framing and I would have taken a few steps back to capture all of it in the image.
Thanks for stopping by today!

Staying Local

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The last time I boarded a flight out of Japan was January 2020. This was a much welcomed change from the previous 20 years of traveling out of Japan every few weeks on business trips. I’ve secretly had a goal to not make my airline status each year for the past many years. I’m finally glad that I have achieved that goal for the past two years and likely for a 3rd for 2022. I’ve very happy with my new post-COVID outbreak lifestyle. I work in the office a few days a week and home a few days a week. I keep a healthy balance of exercise in my life with jiu jitsu and cycling and a much better diet thanks to my wife Mayumi’s amazing cooking. It’s great to be spending much more time at home.

When I was only working from home at the start of COVID and I was spending 10-12 hours a day, 5 days a week on Zoom, my head was in a fog. I was feeling very drained mentally, as many people were. I needed something to challenge myself mentally and inspire professionally. Reading books wasn’t enough. I started looked at various online courses to see if those would fit was I was looking for. After a lot of research, I applied for Stanford’s Graduate School of Business LEAD Program. It’s a 12 month online executive education program focused on leadership, strategy, finance, innovation, negotiation and so much more. I was happy to get in. 12 months and hundreds of hours of study later, I can say it was a very good use of time and a productive way to ride out COVID. Lots of practical learnings that I can apply in work and life.

I haven’t gone out shooting for the past few years as I’m avoiding large crowds but my wife and I have made some trips to some of our favorites getaways outside of Tokyo.

Today’s Configuration: Leica M10-P, Leica M-11 and iPhone.
This is one of our favorite getaways in Gunma prefecture, a few hours north of Tokyo.
This is one of our favorite getaways in Gunma prefecture, a few hours north of Tokyo.
This is a beautiful little garden off the back of our room.
This is a beautiful little garden off the back of our room.
We saw these beautiful summer houses up in Karuizawa while out on a walk. Beautiful and crazy expensive. Another fun getaway about 180 kilometers north of Tokyo. This town became famous as John Lennon lived here with Yoko Ono for a while.
I captured this image on another trip up to Karuizawa. I had to pull over and take this shot. The scene was just too beautiful. There an amazing grocery store in Karuizawa where you can buy all sorts of local fruits, vegetables, meats and more. It’s worth the day trip just for the grocery shopping. I wish I saw the shadow of the torii gates in my framing and I would have taken a few steps back to capture all of it in the image.
Thanks for stopping by today!