what’s next?
japan trip part 2!
i know this website has an extremely tiny viewership. less than 10 people. so i can say with confidence that this will come as a surprise to no one reading this, but i’m going to go again.
im going to go at almost the exact same time of year. i’m doing march-april again for two reasons. first, that is how long it takes to re-earn enough vacation days by working every single holiday. my work gives you 2 vacation days if you work on a holiday. so i’ve worked every single one. and the second reason is sort of an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” type thing. the weather was (for the most part) beautiful, the cherry blossoms are an awesome experience i would be happy to see again, and i won’t really have to deal with snow or insane heat. its an ideal time of year to travel there, so why not just do that again? it’s not like i saw everything you can see in march/april last time anyways.
i have not yet decided where exactly i’m going to go for most of the trip. i will be starting in tokyo again, this time for 12 days. im staying in the same place, though not the same room, as before, in beautiful hatanodai. but this time, my mom is going to come with me for the tokyo part of the trip.
from there, i’m not sure what i will do. i really enjoyed my day trip to nagano last time, and would have loved to have spent more time there. maybe ill stay in nagano for a couple days, and go see the monkeys again.
but this is where it gets tough. ideally, you’d think i should avoid going to the same places i went last time, and go see other parts of japan this time. and that would make sense. however, i really want to eat at that kobe beef restaurant again. and thats in kobe, which might as well be in the osaka/kyoto area. and at the end of my trip i still want to go to beppu again. so its hard to not sort of plan the exact same trip again. i need to either give up on going to that wonderful kobe restaurant, or just give in and do different things in a lot of the same cities.
so here are the two options i am considering. for reference, here is a map showing the places i went last time.
option one - similar path
looking at the above image, you’d think it might be a better idea to head in the opposite direction. however, another way to look at this map is like this:
theoretically, if i did go the same general direction (southwest) from tokyo, i would probably skip hiroshima and nagasaki this time. so lets say i go to osaka and/or kyoto again. osaka has a huge thriving night life that i saw very little of last time. i could focus more on that. i could also go visit nara, which i really wanted to do but never got around to. maybe this time i could go to himeji castle, which is along the route i traveled after osaka last time, but i elected not to go. i could visit fukuoka before ending the trip in beppu again. and i could go back to beppu, which i genuinely believe added years to my life from the pure bliss in that private onsen.
i think if i went with this option, i would also have a section of the trip be in significantly more rural japan. i think it would be interesting to stay in a very remote place. there were many airbnbs that were houses completely out in the middle of nowhere. i avoided that last time, as i was concerned that the language barrier would get harder to deal with the further i went from urban areas. but google translate really does get the job done. and i know some basic enough japanese that i think i could get by if i had to. from a photography perspective, i could get some awesome night landscape and sky photos out in the sticks. i am strongly considering this.
cons
would inevitably see a lot of the same things as last time.
wouldn’t get to have my “total japan visits” map look like i’ve seen the whole country
the experience would likely be similar to the first time. this is not much of a con.
pros
most of the touristy stuff is in tokyo and west/southwest of tokyo
i could see the things i missed out on last time
i know with relative certainty how the weather is going to be
might get to meet up with my friend in kyoto (have not spoken to him yet)
that kobe beef restaurant i still dream about
can visit beppu at the end of the trip without having to take a local flight
option 2 - the exact opposite direction
given the above maps, it seems kind of obvious that i should head northeast this time and see “the other half” of japan. that is what i told myself i would do next time when i got home. i could go niigata, sendai, aomori, and up into hokkaido (that large northern island). i could drink sapporo beer in sapporo! there is significantly more mystery if i go the other direction. i have no idea what to expect. that said, i know hokkaido is known for snow. theres a good chance it will be freezing and snowy out the whole time if i go all the way up there.
cons
most of the touristy stuff is in tokyo and west/southwest of tokyo
no idea how the weather will be
won’t be able to go to that kobe restaurant
will have to take a local flight to be able to go back to beppu at the end
will be too early for cherry blossoms most of the time
pros
would be totally different from the first trip compared to option 1
different local food specialties
its hard to write pros here because it is completely unfamiliar to me
it is a really hard decision to make here, and i don’t really know what i am going to do. i had more to say about option one because i have experience with it. less bullet points and rambling in option two doesn’t really mean its less appealing to me.
anyway, i have a couple months to make that decision. on to the other part of this post.
photography
i really enjoyed the photography and website aspects of the trip last time. it was such a fun idea. i think having the camera made me look at things differently and made the trip more memorable than it otherwise would have been. and i think it being a physical camera instead of just using my phone made it easier to separate from it and be present on the vacation instead of just staring at my phone all day.
the camera i used last time was a “micro four-thirds” sensor camera. essentially, it was a small camera. the magic square on the front of the camera behind the lens that absorbs the light and casts the arcane spell to produce the image is significantly smaller than a “full frame” sensor camera. for comparison, these are the sizes of the magic squares:
there are sizes between these two, but the reason i am bringing this up is because my starter photography journey last time made me learn a lot of things very quickly that are changing how i am approaching it this time.
the micro four thirds size has some significant pros and cons compared to full frame. because the magic square is smaller, the camera body can be smaller and more portable. and due to photography wizardry (photomancy?) i will never understand, it is easier and therefore cheaper to make zoom lenses for a micro four thirds camera. essentially, if you have a 100mm zoom lens on a micro four thirds camera, to get the same shot on a full frame camera, you need a 200mm zoom lens. a micro four thirds camera can accomplish the same zoom as the big guys with half the focal length. if budget or portability is the goal, micro four thirds is the king.
on the trip earlier this year, budget and portability were both the top priority. so it was a no-brainer to get a micro four thirds camera. but having used it for a month, i learned a few things. first, i learned that i love photography. i sold the camera back to the company i bought it from shortly after getting home from the trip earlier this year, because the experience of using a micro four thirds camera made me realize i was willing to up the budget and sacrifice portability for some of the advantages full frame comes with. second, i learned that i don’t love the aspect ratio micro four thirds cameras shoot in. the images it produces are 4:3 aspect ratio. the same as the ancient tvs from my childhood. full frame cameras are 3:2, which will allow me to take wider shots. the reason this matters to me is that when i got home, i went to make desktop wallpapers out of many of my photos, and realized i had to significantly crop them to accomplish that, which ruined many of the shots. for example:
I think images taken on a full frame will allow me to have to crop less to accomplish that.
all this to say, i got a different camera for this trip. i got a sony a7c, a full frame camera.
my favorite lens i used last time was a 17mm. converting that to full frame would be a 34mm, which i don’t believe exists. but 35mm lenses do exist and are quite popular. so if i wanted as close to a 1:1 similarity to what i loved last time, i should have gone for a 35mm. but due to price, availability, and lots of research, i elected to for a 40mm lens instead. similar, would be equivalent to a 20mm on the previous camera. its close enough that i think it will work great.
i only have the one lens at the moment. i intend to get a zoom lens either before the trip or during it. i will most likely get one during the trip, because i had a great experience at a used camera equipment store called map camera in tokyo, where i bought a lens for like 20-30% cheaper than the equivalent used lens in america would have been. so i think i will buy it there. i really only used the zoom lens to great effect a couple times on the trip - at tokyo skytree and in nagano when taking pictures of the monkeys. and the monkeys are an important stop on this trip, so i must have a zoom lens for it. :)
photography rant over.
what’s next for this website?
this website is hosted on squarespace, which i don’t love. but it gets the job done and is easy to use, which was a priority for me given that it was exclusively updated while actively on vacation. i wanted to fiddle with it as little as possible, and thought squarespace might accomplish that. in truth, it only kind of accomplished that. the photo uploader is incredibly buggy and frustrating. for a website that is for the most part about photography, that sucks. i would say the bugginess of it made uploading photos to the website take approximately 3 times longer than if there had been no bugs.
so i am looking at moving to a different provider. my coworker insists i should just make the website from scratch myself. i may pursue that. i am also looking at some other website building platforms to see if anything can strike a balance that leans a little more towards photography, as squarespace is kind of designed for online stores.
but where squarespace did win is the email campaigns and blog layout options. those just worked great every time. for everything except the photos, the website worked perfectly. so i may end up staying.
an issue there is that i don’t think it will let me have a second blog and second gallery very easily. so separating trip 1 content from trip 2 content might be a challenge.
if anyone reading this has any ideas, feel free to let me know.
this will be the last blog post that gets an email blast until the trip starts in march. because the email blast feature costs $10/month to have. i got away with a free trial for the first half of the trip, and then had to subscribe for a month halfway through. thanks squarespace :).
