Amami Superman Photography

Rain, rain and more rain. That's pretty much all we had over the past week. I was lucky enough to take the setsubun photos while it wasn't raining, but it's been pouring ever since. I'm afraid I'm going to miss the sakura season if it doesn't stop. Even though it was raining cats and dogs today, I still took the family out for a drive to check them out. The weather forecast is saying it's going to be rainy for the next week, but weather forecasts are pretty much unreliable until about the day before here in Amami. Hopefully it will change.

So what would a little girl do with cherry blossom petals? You'll have to wait for my next post.

When I first got to the shrine that day, there was no one in sight. As it got closer to otakiage, more people started to show up. After the otakiage, there was a nice little crowd starting to form.

I imagine that if the setsubun fell on a weekend day, there would be plenty more people. As it turned out, setsubun fell on a Wednesday. Mame maki was set for 3:00pm so people would still be at work and elementary children and up would still be in school.

These children in the red hats are from a pre-school. Most pre-schools finish at 2:00pm here in Amami so I imagine these kids are apart of the after-school daycare service most pre-schools provide.

Before the actually bean throwing, the people throwing the beans went inside the shrine and participated in some sort of rite. After the rite was performed, they came out with the beans and got ready.

It was about this time that my photos really started to suck. From motion blur to out of focus shots, I wanted to kick myself after I saw them that evening. If the out-of-focus shots were in focus, I think they would have been some really great shots. The mame maki only lasted a minute or so, so I didn't have a chance to check to see how they were turning out. I was so excited to get home and check them out. When I did get home and looked at them, I wanted to go into a rage and destroy something. Well, not really. I was just sad I screwed them up. I did get a few OK shots though.

It was amazing to see even the older folks getting down and scrounging up the peanuts that fell to the ground. It reminded me of little kids gathering up candy after a piñata had been cracked open.

After the mame maki, they handed out omamori which are basically good luck charms. The actual word mamoru means to protect or defend. So an actual direct translation would be a protection charm.

When I first heard about setsubun, my first question was, why don't they do the good luck thing during New Years instead of a month after? I first thought that maybe it had to do with the Chinese calendar but after a bit of study, I found I was wrong. I thought I would take a bit to explain what setsubun is.

Setsu means season and bun means part or division. They use the word setsubun to refer to the day before the first day of a season. Now days, setsubun is referred to as the day before the first day of Spring. Although they had calendars thousands of years ago in Japan, not everyone used them. Instead, many people went off the lunar cycles for their calendar. Because the the Spring setsubun was also the day before the Lunar New Year, it was also considered New Year's Eve.

So to answer my first question, why don't they do the good luck thing during New Years instead of a month later? Well they do, if you use the lunar calendar like they did a long time ago.

The water in the basin is used for purification. You wash your hands, mouth and sometimes your feet before approaching the shrine.

An omikuji is a fortune. These fortunes tell you what kind of luck you will have over the next year. Once someone receives their fortune, they tie it to a line like in the above photo.

These wooden plaques are called "ema". You write your wish or desire for the New Year on them.

When one goes to say a prayer, they usually throw in a donation into the box in front of the rope. The rope has some large bells attached to the top and after you throw your money into the box, you give the rope a good shaking. You then bow once or twice and clap your hands together twice holding the second clap and say your prayer. Once your prayer is complete, you bow again and you're through.

Most shrines in Japan have this sort of artistic craftsmanship. The larger shrines in central Japan dwarf this small shrine in size and it makes me wonder about all the work that goes into making a big shrine. The only big shrine I've every been to is Dazaifu Tenmangu in Fukuoka.

They were going to have a special event here at the shrine and I wanted to get here early. I arrived about an hour before the event started and I took some time to walk around and snap shots to get a feel for the area.

I'm not exactly sure when but this shrine was rebuilt about 15 years or so ago. I vaguely remember them doing construction on the shrine around the time I first came to Amami. I know that the shrine is older than 15 years because I've read in books that hunger protests were held at the shrine back in 1951 prior to the return of the Amami Islands to Japan. Following WWII, Amami was under American control for about 7 years. Before the actual Peace Treaty with Japan was made, a copy of the final version of the treaty was aired over the radio and nothing was said of the return of the Amami islands to Japan. This caused a significant amount of distress to the people of Amami which in turn led to the many hunger protests. The event I was there to see has nothing to do with this. I just thought I would share some Amami history with you.

As I was writing this post, I was trying to remember the name of this shrine. Every time I said "Takachiho", I was like, "No, that's the dairy farm we visited back in November." I asked my wife and it turned out that the name is the same as Takachiho Farms.

I then walked outside and took a few shots just outside my wife's shop.

Next thing I knew, I was walking down the street taking shots of different things.

As I walked down the street, I came up to a fresh seafood store. They have all sorts of fish and live seafood. I asked if I could take a few photos and they were more then happy to have me. They even brought me around back to see some of the stuff they were preparing.

I have to lol about this. I have some Australian friends who got after me when when I called some prawns "shrimp". They were kind enough to set me straight and told me Americans are dumb and don't know the difference between shrimp and prawns. They said something about gills and big and small. I still don't know the difference when I see them. All I know is they taste yummy in my tummy.

Just after this shot, I rolled the film and realized I was out. "What?!! That was 24 shots?!" I couldn't believe it. In the space of maybe 15 or 20 minutes I used up the roll of 24. I even took my time with each shot I took. I guess I'm just used to using a digital camera and taking as many photos as I want.

I rewound the roll and brought it back to my friend's shop to have him develop the negatives. He then used his negative scanning machine and saved them to a disc. The above film photos are just as he scanned them. I didn't do any post editing to them except for the scooter photo, I did a small amount of post cropping to level the photo. Out of the 24 shots I took in this roll, one was underexposed and a few of them were out of focus.

I decided a few days ago I wanted to try taking some shots with a film camera for fun. As I said, my knowledge and experience with film cameras is pretty much zero. I wanted to use black and white film but as it turns out, no one develops black and white film here on the island anymore. Oh well.

So what was my impression using a manual focus SLR camera? It was something new and fun for me. It was interesting using a camera I've never used before. That being said, the Nikon FM2 is simple and straight forward. Using the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 felt a bit like I was using my Sigma 30mm f/1.4 on my D60. Very easy to use. I'm looking forward to taking more photos with this camera and lens in the future.

Owning a D60, I always read about one of the downsides to this camera and lenses. The D60 uses a silent wave motor in AF-S lenses for auto focus. AF-S just means the focusing motor is inside the lens and not inside the camera. I heard you can still attach non AF-S lenses and use them, you just wouldn't be able to use the auto focus. I decided to try it out and I put the 50mm f/1.8 on my D60. The first thing I noticed was you could only use the camera and this lens while in manual mode. The camera doesn't recognize there's a manual lens attached and none of the other modes would work. There's also no range finder so you pretty much have to guesstimate exposure, but that's easy, it's a digital camera. Here is a test shot of my daughter using my D60 and the 50mm f/1.8. I wasn't paying attention and I had the exposure bias set to -2/3 EV so it's under exposed. I didn't do any post editing.