TokyoTeacher

Cupola

tokyoteacher — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 23:33:11 +0000

We gathered here one evening. It was me, Nick, Nige and Lindsay and some others. Among those others I’m remembering now may have been a guy who had previously threatened to beat me up owing to an offence involving his younger sister and a playfully thrown turd. But that was then. Weeks later and somehow placated, he had become, to a surprise I can still recall, a regular if peripheral member of a scallywag gang that had little to do except hang around underneath motorways.

‘Let’s get some fire,’ someone said. This meant a whip round and chipping in for a gallon of four star and then a walk to over to Texaco. As before it would begin with a stroll to Lindsay’s house to get the fuel can his dad kept in his shed and then a quick run down the Plaza to sort out the juice while someone else located the milk bottles. This time it was the turn of me and Nick. After our friend had got the five litre container, everyone divvied up the coins and we set off.

The forecourt was quiet as I filled up the can. I paid and the woman behind the counter didn’t say anything to me except a cursory thanks. When I got back I pointed this out to Nige who’d got hassled before and everyone laughed. He told me to fuck off and said it must’ve been a different lady. The empties were sourced from the doorsteps of houses in Tudor Street. Evening time they were all just outside, rinsed and ready. Somebody had got hold paper for the fuses, too. We were away.

In my hand the bottle felt cold and weighty. Filling them three quarters full we’d learnt was the optimum balance of risk and reward. Too much and you chanced an evening in Chepstow burns and too little of course and it wasn’t worth a toss. Razzamatazz was where it was at and that’s why, without warning, I threw it straight up, as hard as I could. It was a stupid thing to do but then that’s a given when you’re fifteen.

When I picture it now, I’m outside that nefarious huddle and from a distance, can see our loose silhouette, and suddenly from within that same shadow, a yellow seed of light that shoots up towards the concrete underbelly of the M4, the whispery whoosh and flutter of flame, then bang, an almighty bloom of fire and…

‘Faaaccckkk!!!’ Everyone running in different directions. Petrol raining down, burning and luminous. Soles scratching, accelerating on the stoney dirt, screams of laughter echoing deep. ‘Jeeeezuz…’ And on they went, these protests, these howls, shouted from unseen corners of shelter, until finally quieting so all you could pick up was the soft particular sound of flame falling. The incendiary glow, too, so quick to take the darkness, returned it just before a voice started up again. Now though, it was softer, hurt almost. It was the new guy.

What I remember next is sprinting. Faster than I ever had before sprinting, thinking, panicking, ‘I’ve burnt him, burnt him…’ We all got there at the same time. Everyone, me too, touched him, patted him, feeling to see if he was okay because we couldn’t see a thing. It was very dark in the place he’d taken cover.

‘You okay? I thought you were..’ ‘There’s a dog there,’ and he pointed to the foot of one of the big columns. ‘Dog? What you mean?’ ‘Just fucking look.’ There was still that hurt. Nobody made jokes. We went to look. ‘I can’t see anything,’ one of the boys said. ‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘When I saw it I dropped my lighter, I bent down to pick it up, it was all wet.’ Somebody still had some paper and they lit it and made a torch. We walked over to where he said he’d been. Then we found the dog.

In the uneven light you could still make out it had been a Labrador. Big but young maybe. The jaw was torn back. The two front legs were there but the hind ones weren’t. The ribcage was like an open black hollow and the guts, all the inside parts, were a spill, in places shiny. It was bad. We were all silent except for dry breathy words of disbelief. We walked away from it and carried on until we got into some streetlight. The new guy looked at me, showed me his hand. There was stuff on it. He was upset, angry as well. ‘See what I mean. I ain’t fucking burnt, am I.’ I said sorry to him.

The conversation about how and why a dog could end up like that, in the place were it was, kept going for an hour. So, too, about the who and how we should tell. I honestly can’t remember what was decided on but it couldn’t have involved me. If it had, that’s something I’d recall and could mention now but I can’t.

Lines

tokyoteacher — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 08:01:00 +0000

I was hellbent on getting a picture. Holding the camera again felt purposeful in a way it hadn’t for a long time and this was good. The growing distance between me and any kind of creative endeavour was an uneasy one. Anyway, composing and recomposing, moving all the pieces within a frame, changing the distances between one point and the next, like a testing of different balances – where the omission of one detail works and where another might not – then making a choice and immortalising a scene reacquainted me with a rare satisfaction.

This photo was taken just minutes before my Friday morning class, (a breezy four hour stroll through adverbs of frequency and basic tenses with a dozen high rolling Chinese). With a nine o’clock start fast approaching and diminishing opportunities, habit returned me to the staircase just outside the hallway. As before, the ready made geometry and strong shapes were persuasion enough and I took out my camera. Then, in that same instant, through steps we can only begin to see, came a very unexpected sun with spokes of light that printed on the wall a pattern of parallel lines. This intervention turned an unremarkable study into pleasing play of form and contrast. Meaningful joy ensued.

Hastily wielded: LX3, ISO400, f4, 1/640

I’m lovin it

tokyoteacher — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:31:25 +0000

In a number of my earlier posts I’ve had good reason, I believe, to spend a little time on the words, to fashion something commensurate for the image they will support. It’s an undertaking I’ve mostly enjoyed, occasionally struggled with, though too often been frustrated by. It’s never straightforward, ultimately, getting down the lines that must communicate, sometimes at once, the changing light on the tall, hard sides of a metropolitan sunrise, (the ember red of first light, the bruisey blue of shadow). Or then, those that can negotiate, familiarise and then capture the solitariness of city life (or its counter, the escape). It’s the stuff, the alchemy even, of distillation. Of the picture, of the moment, of the same stirring impetus that once pressed the shutter that now presses the keys. For within both lies an uncomplicated ambition to reach.

This time however almost none of the above applies. Why? Because the centrepiece of this post, as can be seen in the photo, shows a man in the exalted throws of a very personal kind of ecstasy, recumbent on a chair whose makers probably hadn’t envisioned either its quite extraordinary levels of comfort or evident versatility, and whose owners, McDonalds, similarly didn’t picture it’s use for anything beyond a burger and an altogether different kind of shake.

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I found this shot recently. I remember taking it, of course. It was in a McDonalds not far from where I used to live, below a station called Mikawashima. What do I remember about Mikawashima? It’s where I used to start my Saturday journeys, when I would go and see Kashiwa Reysol, emboldened by a cold Let’s Liosk Asahi inside me and a second in my hand. Good days. Also, it’s where I went when my bike got ‘towed’ after I had parked it in the wrong place, and the subsequent recovery costing me five large. Finally, it’s where I took the picture for the post entitled Cosy. It’s not the best part of town.

An LX3 snap.

“I was where people were.”

tokyoteacher — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:24:39 +0000

A View from Brooklyn

I was looking for an easy thirty minutes and a coffee. I’d just spent an hour with the Inland Revenue and close to that HMRC office I found this joint. I liked it straightaway. It wasn’t Starbucks. There was space and quiet. It was also, in this world full of franchised sameness, its own place. I liked the interior, the set up, the shapes, the choice in decoration. Not so long ago a wall sized print of New York would’ve been just that. Now though, you see the skyline and in that instant think, ‘Hey, the Towers…’, and remember that they’ve gone, and then maybe, like me, feel the small ache of a sadness that persists.

In front of me were a pair of old guys talking. They were to the left of what you see above and out of the frame, occupying a couple of window seats, silhouetted against the noon daylight. I was alone, sitting where this picture was taken, mostly looking outwards. I can’t remember if I wondered why they hadn’t chosen one of the booths but it’s something I notice now. Maybe they liked the sun or watching the city outside. Anyway.

Normally, theirs were voices that would have blended easily into a background of midday custom but on that day there was no hurry, no bustle, no tustle of crockery and steam. Besides the Italian proprietress waiting behind her counter, and I, indifferently reading at my table, there was little to muffle or render anonymous the words they spoke. At first it seemed a conversation with that ordinary back and forth, something you’d naturally tune out, simple exchanges that filled the air then didn’t. But soon, even without meaning to, certain things, phrases, somehow snagged and like an odd rendition of a familar song, hung around.

The words on the pages in front of me became redundant. Those I’d begun to listen to, the sentences of peculiar arrangements, like old constructions now gone, claimed my attention. I learned that it was a talk of reminiscence. One with its natural pauses and silences, perhaps the small breaks for sifting and the material of recollection thick and heavy. In minutes, though, there were changes, softenings in rhythm. The cadences, too. Utterances were fewer, plaintive even and they started to slow. Then, they fell silent.

It’s strange now, how quickly I noticed they’d stopped. In my memory, beyond the two of them, all that remains of what was left, is a line or two, jutting out of that tangled diction. “I was where people were.”

As I was leaving, I asked the lady if I could take a photo of the picture on the wall, explaining that I liked it. I imagined a look of surprise but there was none. Instead, she replied yes, no problem and added that the request was not an unusual one. I thanked her, took out my camera, composed the shot and pressed the button.

Picture taken using the LX3 – settings: ISO 80, f2, 1/13

Squall

tokyoteacher — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:50:48 +0000

“You have to remember that the sun is always there, Vladik, even if you cannot see it. Often it is hidden, obscured, obstructed, but only that. So understand that this will end. And you will know that warmth again and see in its light. And it will get lighter – just promise me you’ll not forget this. It will be better, believe me.”

Fyodor Dolokhov, Officer, War and Peace

There are storms and then, well, there are storms. Such as those that change the light so quickly you look at your watch. As on this occasion when an untimely darkness in my apartment made me glance at my own. Wait a minute, I thought, it couldn’t be…nah, then I went outside onto my balcony just to make sure.

A sky hung low over a city awash, heavy bellied with an impenetrable cloud. The sun was gone and Shinjuku reduced to apparition. Suddenly the day was out of sync and only westwards was there a remainder of normal afternoon colours. Unfamiliar as the setting was the insistent swshhh of rain on the river. Elemental drama. Sweet.

Captured with the EOS 400D, EF 28-70mm, ISO200, f9, 1/100

The Coming Glow

tokyoteacher — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 05:40:47 +0000

My days often start like this. Alone, but full with quiet and colour. What’s there meets me uninterrupted; I feel the cool of a night just been and the stillness of a city yet properly started. It’s a world languid and fleeting and I hold what I can.

Minutes pass like moments and my day begins. Tea, ablutions, and then other things that you’ll know too well yourself.

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Nerdy part – This is a picture I’ve taken before. I just wanted to use the LX3 to see how it stood up against my SLR. It did well. However, for a full resolution view of this joyous postcard moment, follow the Flickr link.

Baby Gorillapod mounted, LX3, ISO100, f/7.1, 1 second

Cosy

tokyoteacher — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:35:51 +0000

I saw this man when I stopped for a consolatory drink after a thwarted photo shoot. The disappointment of unmet expectations, an itchy trigger finger and the prospect of going home empty handed made this simple intrusion foregone.

Before, the homeless made for easy, memorable pictures: strikingly unkempt, wildly dressed, human, accessible – the exotic between us. They’ve also the rewarding aspect of a ready, low key drama, the type their appearance and status inevitably endows, the way they make misfortune visible.

Now it’s harder deal altogether. This particular kind of exile, a sharp friend succinctly noted, ‘…has become a cliche, a first port-of-call for photography students.’ He’s right, of course, but for me there’s the their-tragedy-our-spectacle part that is the great dissuader. Whereas if their plight becomes your mission then that’s a different story, go ahead, fire away.

But what sealed it for me with the guy above was the groovy way in which he wore his cold weather proofing. Not only did he eschew the usual and ungainly cardboard boxes, but his unorthodox quilt-wrap style lent him a certain Teletubby cool, a cosy cartoon plumpness that enabled me to overlook the all the concerns outlined here and reach for my camera.

Quickly unholstered: LX3, ISO400, f2.8, 1/40

To and Fro

tokyoteacher — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:02:15 +0000

“Young schoolgirls pressing against me, they’re usually soft and smell good. That’s not so bad. In fact, it can be quite nice but of course, it’s mostly salary men, all bad breath, sweat and hard edges, their elbows and cases and other stuff sticking in me. There’s a big groan when we all push together, finding space where there is none. Summer is the worst, it’s tight and hot and the aircon does nothing. I feel like I’m going to pass out. Maybe I do. I often sleep standing up.”

Unidentified Office Worker, Tokyo, August 07

JR East, Passenger Survey Report

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For as long as I have lived here, inextricably bound to Tokyo life is the rail commute. Crowded carriages and platforms, teeming with restless suits and side-partings, obediently filing off and on – it’s another picture of the city. I think of it and then of a lifeblood, coursing through intricate arterial passages: the rush, the squeeze, the push, the movement, the pause…the repeat; a cycle so persistent, vital and dull. Everyday I join this same flow and catch the same trains, taking some of that slight and precious space with my average size, case and coat. I get on when the doors yawn open, adding my weight to a load already full. And weary, too. Between faces spent and empty I find some standing room only. The movement begins and the travel resumes. I am being carried again. Then through the glass a familiar footage is ignored. My eyes start to close, I lean and drift, the cradle-sway of transit is soothing. I fall asleep and the journey goes.

Both pictures featured come from the LX3.

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Embedded, deep cover style – the author as commuter

Quickly Taken – A Visit to the Bunka Kaikan

tokyoteacher — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:25:20 +0000

This is what happens on a quiet news week and there’s a blank page to fill – you test any residual reader loyalty by inserting pictures that’ll be hard to make sense of and even then, with the love truly tested, support them with a text that won’t mention anything redemptory, perhaps something sensational like illicit sex with students, gun smuggling or that old favourite, a run-in with the cops. Alas not, despite the appeal of all those things, no claims can be made on any but stay tuned as you never know.

The picture above is, (and it kills me to be this dry), the ceiling detail atop of a deep spiral staircase in Tokyo’s Bunka Kaikan. I wandered in looking for a picture and found a set of tightly winding steps stretching six floors deep. From the level I entered, helicoidal grooves, each with a hard-wearing PVC lip, circled upwards and downwards, and then getting smaller in a pleasing way that made irresistible the cliche that is the photo below.

The serrated core of the inside edge, the graded play of light and dark on the concrete underneath and finally the satisfying continuation of a line (that begins near the top left) into the triangle at the centre make this photograph just about acceptable. I took it leaning over the banister of the second floor much to the interest of the passing pedestrian traffic, all well-padded matronly types – there was a piano recital that afternoon – who, along with a strong smell of talc, filled the narrow space all too easily. It was the kind of attention that got in the way. So I ascended slowly, stopping where a good composition might show itself through the lens. Wine coloured walls and small windows made it a dark environment and handheld work a challenge. Most of the pictures were just fuzzy. The three in this post are the ones that made it through. In the last shot, it was difficult to make all the ingredients work and arrange them so it would be more than mere stock. What do you think?

Does it work? I think so, but only just. Of course, should you agree or not, I’d be happy to know.

Cheers,

All images are JPEGs, taken using an LX3, on an ISO400 setting at f/2

Stand Alone

tokyoteacher — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:18:14 +0000

There are appreciable sensations when, late at night, you’re all alone, standing right before a broad river’s edge whose body is as dead and dark as emulsion. The steady flow, the turbid depth, the cold; they’re ready to consume you. This proximity to real danger creates a curious frisson. I’d felt it before and there I felt it again and I like it. Then there are the more easily communicated aspects. Where I stood was quiet, depopulated, still and serene. I was by myself, looking at a view I’d never seen before, composing, resetting, imagining the final picture – those things that exert an enduring pleasure.

The device: Canon 400D, sur la trepied, ISO400, f/8, 13