Todai-ji

An interior shot of the famous temple in Nara, though this isn't the Great Buddha. It was even darker than it looks in this photo!

Hard at work

I took this on a sunny afternoon in Madison Square Park. This kid seemed to be very industriously playing in the sand with no-one paying any attention. I like his solitary sense of purpose and the way the shadows of the trees fall on the sand, getting down low really helped with a sense of depth.

Books on the street

In the summer Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg is lined with book sellers setting up out on the sidewalk. The one I talked to let me take his portrait (and yes, I did buy a book).

Nankinmachi

Nankinmachi, the Chinatown in Kobe, is small but fun, as well as the usual shops there's a plaza surrounded by food stalls where you can buy Japanese-style Chinese food, well worth a visit. This is a quick shot of one of them.

Rounding out the roundup of Osaka camera stores I visited that I posted a few weeks ago, there are also two near Nankinmachi that may be worth checking out. I've made a map to help you find them.

The more interesting one is Motomachi Camera right behind Nankinmachi, it's a second-hand store that specialises in manual-focus cameras (photo above, the Japanese name is in white at the top of the door). There was what looked like near-new Nikon F100 on sale for 16,500 yen, and the owner explained to me dismissively that he was selling it cheaply "because it requires batteries". May be worth checking out. In addition, there's a Camera no Naniwa just around the corner on the left side of the entrance to the Kobe Motomachi shopping arcade. For completeness, I added Matsumiya Camera, which I posted about last year -- it's about a half hour walk if you stick to the railway line.

Lines and clouds

A view of the port of Kobe that caught my eye while I was walking around on a rainy day.

Standing and drinking

While wandering around Kobe's Sannomiya Station after dark we discovered an alley lined with tiny "standing only" bars. I didn't snap too many photos, but it's on my list of places to photograph next time we're in Kobe!

Maruyama Koen

Cherry blossom season in Japan means enjoying sitting under the cherry blossom trees, so when the season comes around, stalls selling everything you need to enjoy yourself appear in parks. This is of the ones at Maruyama Koen in Kyoto.

Skateboarders on Sunday afternoon

There's still more to come from Japan, but for a change of pace, here's a slice of life from New York.

Above Osaka (and second-hand camera stores)

At the top of the Umeda Sky Building. I'm not sure if the security guard realised that I was taking photographs of him, but he very obligingly stayed still.

Since one of the most frequently-visited posts on this blog is the one I wrote about a second-hand camera store in Kobe, I figure that there may be some use to somebody in reporting on the second-hand camera stores I went to in Osaka. If you're a photographer and you find yourself in Kobe wanting to buy some equipment, you should really head to Osaka since there's a much wider selection.

Yodobashi Camera across the street from JR Umeda station needs no introduction from me, but they don't sell second-hand equipment (even so, you should pay a visit if you haven't been to a really big Japanese camera store before). Fortunately there are at least three used camera stores in the vicinity. Across the street from Yodobashi Camera there are branches of the two main Osaka camera store chains, Camera no Kitamura and Camera no Naniwa. They're practically next to each other and both of them are on the second floor of the buildings they're located in (look for their names in Japanese, キタムラ and ナニワ). Right next to JR Umeda station itself is Yaotomi Camera, which is the biggest of the three and has a very large selection of second-hand equipment on display. Unfortunately a map isn't much help finding it since it's in the basement of a building next to the station, but you can get to it if you go the station's South Building and then follow signs for the subway Midosuji Line. Take the stairs down to the basement, Yaotomi Camera will be on your left.

I also went down to Nanba, and ended up finding a Nikon FE2 at what seemed like a reasonable price at the Camera no Kitamura in the basement of the Nanba City building. Once again the map is a bit misleading, assuming you took the Midosuji Line down from Umeda, when you get off you'll find yourself in front of the north entrance to JR Namba station. Walk around to the east side of the station and then walk south until you find the Nanba City building on your right (なんばCITY). It's split in two by a road, go into the South Building and go down to the basement and you'll find the store. It isn't really that different from the one in Umeda, but since I found the camera I was looking for there cheaper than elsewhere (12,000 yen) I may as well mention it.

Bankrupt!

I caught sight of this guy wearing a very unusual jacket on a rainy day in Shibuya. On closer inspection it's a protest jacket, he seems to have thought up a creative way of  complaining about a bank bankruptcy (bankrupt in 1998, no dividend payment to any shareholders, no shareholders' general meeting, etc). Not a typical Tokyo photo!