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.