(An Ode to The Song That Never Ends)

I wasn’t aware I was wrong
The time that I sang you that song.
But looking back now,
I can clearly see how
You’d think thirty days is too long.

I have a busy few weeks ahead of me. This Friday I’ll be leaving for Seoul for a long weekend in kimchi country. It’ll be my first time over, despite the fact that it’s the closest neighboring country to here, and trips there are actually cheaper than similar trips within Japan. With Spring vacation starting this week (for the kids at any rate), I figured it was the perfect opportunity to make us this grievance, and plan on taking in as much of the sites as possible on my limited time frame.

The weekend after I get back I’ll be heading down to Kyoto for a day trip to do a little cherry blossom viewing in the old capital. I haven’t been to Kyoto since 2001, and the thought of seeing the old place again decked out in its finest colors has me pretty excited. A very sweet way to spend my last hanami for a while I think. As you would imagine, I plan on going photo crazy while I’m down there, so stay tuned for lots of sakura magic after I get back.

And finally, a few days after my trip down I’ll be visited by two very special guests who’ll be staying with me for a week. Joshua and Sachi will be coming to Japan, splitting their time between visiting relatives in Hiroshima, and spending time with me and members of Sekiyado Chapel here in Saitama. It will be fantastic seeing both of them again, and I can’t wait to run around Tokyo again with them (the last time both me and Joshua were here together was 2003…wow!).

Check back with updates on each of the three exciting events coming up, and wish me luck actually getting some sleep over the next few weeks. Excelsior!

Last October, as I was up in Nikko taking pictures of the autumn leaves, something quite unfortunate happened. About halfway through the day I accidentally dropped my light meter. It wasn’t from a very large height—it had been perched precariously on the edge of a chair—but it managed to land in just the right way as to become completely useless. It had been an old Weston Master Universal III which I had bought cheaply off of Ebay, and so having gotten quite a bit of use out it, decided that my next one should be of a little higher caliber. After a fair bit of research, I had settled on a Sekonic Studio Deluxe II, which offered everything that I was looking for, but at a potentially reasonable price. After scouring Ebay for a couple weeks, I finally came across the meter I wanted at the price I was looking for, and quickly set about procuring it. Thus began my journey into the madness that would nearly (dramatically speaking) claim my very life!

The day after I confirmed payment for the light meter, I received a message saying that the full amount that I had paid had been returned, and a short reply from the seller saying that there was a problem with their account, and if I could send the payment to a private email account through Paypal. Having not been born yesterday, I responded by saying that if I was to pay, it would have to be through proper Ebay channels as to keep me eligible for buyer protection. The seller agreed to this, and sent me a new pay request through Ebay; except that it failed to work. He tried again. It failed again. He asked if I by chance knew how to work the thing. I started reading tutorials on Ebay about the ins and outs of selling. It was absolutely ridiculous. Finally he said that I could send the money to the original account, and then offered this explanation: “Yeah, sorry about that. The original account that I was using to sell belongs to my girlfriend, and she’s off on vacation, and I have no way to contact her to ask for the password, so I wouldn’t have access to the money until after she gets back. But oh well.”

……

……

……

At any rate, the payment was received, and the package was sent. He didn’t have the means to send the package internationally, so I had it sent to my folks address, where they in turn were going to forward it on ahead to me here. They got the package, checked the contents to make sure everything was in order (hurray on not getting screwed!), and sent the sorely won prize on to my twitching hands. I waited intently for that little meter, checking the mailbox daily in my high state of anticipation. However the days soon starting turning into weeks, and my anticipation gradually gave way to dread. Around the two and a half week mark, I called up my family and casually asked about my package. “Oh, it’s definitely on its way honey. Don’t worry!” was the reply. I then asked the question that I feared the most. “Um, which address again did you send it to?” I hesitantly inquired.

“Why, to your address in Kuki of course!”

Crappity crap crap crap.

“Uh, you do remember that Kuki was my first address in Japan, and that I actually live in Kurihashi now, right?”

“Well, Kuki is the only address we have here, honey. You must have never given us your new address.”

Heaping piles of monstrous crap.

I knew at that point that there would be little hope in retrieving that poor lost light meter. The forwarding address that I had left there would have long since expired by then, and the tracking info from the package had either been wrong, or simply wasn’t working, as the post office was completely clueless as to its whereabouts. Dejected, I resolved to try again, and doggedly perused the light meter listings on Ebay for another decently priced copy. After a couple weeks of fruitless searching and being outbid, I finally had the presence of mind to check other avenues, and happened upon the used section on Amazon. There I found a couple different sellers offering my light meter, and while they were both almost twice as much as what I paid for, I realized that I was running out of options as I was only a few weeks from returning home for Christmas, and wanted to be able to take it back with me on the plane rather than having to send it internationally again. My purchase made, I checked in with my family regularly to see if it had arrived. The answer was always the same, and finally as I prepared to head back, I kept my fingers crossed that it would simply arrive while I was back. Oh feeble hope, why are you so easily crushed?? Wait as I may, there was no sign of my poor light meter. When I consulted with Amazon, I was told that because of the Christmas season shipping might be slow, and that I would need to wait until the expected delivery date expired before I could take action. Finally the day came, and with less than a week left in the States, I sent out a flurry of requests to the parties involved to find out what became of my missing property. I finally received an answer later that day from a very surprised sounding seller. It seems that he was very new to the whole “selling” thing, and so had assumed that no one would actually make a purchase from him; the end result being a total neglect of his seller account, and all purchases made through it. He then went on to say that he tried to complete the transaction through Amazon so he could get the order sent off, but that the order had been suspended because the delivery expiration date had already passed, and that the best he could do was to refund my money and offer his apologies.

YEEEAAAARRRGHHHH!!!

Time was now running short. Remembering that there was still one other seller on Amazon, I offered up a silent prayer and checked to see if the meter was still available. Amazingly, not only was it still available, but since Christmas had just ended, the price had even been significantly knocked down! Not believing my luck, I quickly placed my order, and put in the extra money to get express shipping. It was a gamble, but I crossed my fingers that after all the misery I had suffered, fate would surely be kind to me now.

My flight back to Japan left on January 2, at 8am. At 10am my package arrived. A fishing crew, working off the Alaskan coast that same day, reported seeing a commercial plane flying overhead, followed by the distinct sound of a grown man weeping. No further investigation was made.

Epilogue:

The meter was finally sent out, and five days later arrived safely in my arms. I have been enjoying using it quite a bit, and have already been impressed with the results. Its ease of use, especially in low light situations, has been most enthusiastically appreciated. As a further follow-up, I just talked with my family this past weekend, and was informed that after almost four months of being adrift in the nether sphere, my prodigal son has returned home, and is now patiently awaiting our future reunion. Great, now what am I going to do with two of the bloody things!?

The End(?)

It was my mom’s birthday last week, so I thought I’d try out a new wire sculpture as a present. The design was pretty fun to make, and I was pleased with the results. Clean and simple=smart design (I hope). I wanted to quick get this up, so the image is a little jacked, especially around the base. That aside, please enjoy, and let me know what you think!

I’ve been enjoying making wire sculptures recently, including these two guys pictured here, as something fun to do between classes at school. I’ve got more sitting around my apartment, but am a little nervous about making too many of them as they’re not really the easiest things to pack inside a suitcase. Once I’ve got the designs down though, they’re not terribly difficult to reproduce, so I’m looking at it as more of an experimenting process at the moment. I’ll try to put more from time to time, but meanwhile enjoy these two wire brains.