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[OM] Re: Slightly OT Tokyo recommendations

Subject: [OM] Re: Slightly OT Tokyo recommendations
From: "Michael R. Collins" <michael789@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 17:17:20 -0500
>...what are some of your favorite sites to visit?...

Not a specific recommendation, but a general observation: there's 
usually a huge variety in a small space, so spend lots of time 
exploring on foot.

Some examples. We (my travel group, in 1976) stayed at the Hotel New 
Otani in Tokyo. The hotel gardens incorporated a traditional Japanese 
garden, a stream, a carp pond [I don't think the word koi was in 
vogue then], a waterfall, and a long, meandering path through all 
sort of trees, shrubs, and stone statues. Across the (very busy) 
street was a walled, sunken park, a couple of metres below street 
level, virtually no traffic noise, with a pathway around a pond with 
a small island in the middle. Lots of photo possibilities, plus some 
respite from the busy city as a bonus.

If you do go out in the countryside at all, look at the land use. As 
you travel you'll start to see a pattern not unique to Japan but 
ubiquitous there, of villages in the centre of valleys, then the rice 
and other fields spread out around them, then terraced fields 
starting up the hills, until finally there are trees still standing 
as the slopes become too steep for agriculture.

Also look at regional variations in architecture and materials. 
Depending on local clays, roof tiles may be reddish or brownish or 
quite bold blues. Other visuals: forests of TV aerials on apartment 
building roofs; mesh-enclosed golf driving ranges or tiny courses.

And, as others have said, lots of fast film/fast lens opportunities 
to photograph indoors. I came back with little in the way of indoor 
photos, since I was shooting only Kodachrome 64, and had no tripod.

ObOM: Bought my OM-1 just a few weeks before the trip, with 50/1.8, 
135/2.8, 28/3.5, and Vivitar 2x; bit of a step up, previous camera 
was an Instamatic :-) .

Michael

P.S. A piece of advice on maps, from a friend of mine: bilingual maps 
are way more useful than English-only tourist maps, in case you need 
a "local" to help you get unlost.

-- 
Michael R. Collins  ...  Michael.Collins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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