Umeda Sky Building

The Umeda Sky Building is about 10 minutes on foot from JR Umeda Station (when you know where you're going; I asked at the information desk at the station but then got lost along the way). From the roof you can get a panoramic view of Osaka, but the building it self is quite interesting too. I took this photo from inside some public artwork underneath the arch of the building, and framed it to try and exploit the circles and triangles.

The lizard

The first place I wanted to check out in Osaka was Dotonbori. On the Ebisubashi bridge I found a guy hanging out with a dog and some kind of a lizard. I asked him, "Is that a crocodile?" and he said, "It's a monitor lizard from Indonesia", and confirmed that he was "taking it for a walk". Inevitably I asked if he minded me taking a picture and he consented, here's what I got. About a week later I saw him again at Ebisubashi, without the dog and lizard, so I guess he may be a local.

Osaka Castle

We're back from our trip to Japan, so here is a very Japanese-looking photo, a little later than promised. I took this at Osaka Castle; not shown is the crowd of other photographers who were also taking photos around this spot. At that time of day this was the best place to take a photo to get back-lighting on the cherry blossoms, but that left the castle itself partly in the shade. If I was really dedicated I would have come earlier and stayed longer to get a better shot, but there was plenty of interesting stuff to do!

While I was taking photographs near this spot a fellow cameraman came up to me and asked to see the photo I had just taken. He said, not bad, but if you frame less tightly you get more of a 3-D feeling in the photo, and showed me his. I felt a sense of accomplishment that my knowledge of Japanese photography jargon is just good enough to understand the phrase "3-D feeling".