Well, it's not quite Mt. Everest, and not even as high as the mountain we visited in Ehime Prefecture last month, but the view made it feel like it was. Pierre Nadeau, the Japanese swordsmith I visited earlier this month, stopped off to show us this view on the way to lunch.
So, Uh, Where's the Food?
My imperfect Japanese can sometimes make for comical situations. I heard that we were going for lunch and that I should follow in my car. It was quite a long drive, but I wasn't surprised because someone had said we were going to “Oishiikougen”, which I understood as, literally, “Tasty Plateau”. The mental image that popped into my mind was a cleared-out area in the mountains with a number of restaurants and cafes joining together to make a “destination”, sort of like a food mall in the middle of a picturesque nowhere.
I was correct about the “picturesque nowhere” part. It turns out that it's not the “Oishiikougen” (美味しい高原) that I thought I heard, but rather, “Oishikougen” (生石高原), a pleasant park near the top of the locally-highest Mt Oishigamine (生石ケ峰), a very picturesque nowhere indeed, but also a nowhere decidedly devoid of a mall-like dining experience.
I was, of course, the only one to have made this misunderstanding.
What I should have done (besides understanding how to configure the lens properly) was to focus on the man, then wait and snap the shot when the plane was in the plain of focus. The plane was darting around quickly, but after a while I bet I would have gotten lucky. I tried this a week later with some birds (in “Big Lens at the River: Focusing on Disappointment”) to better success than the photo above.
Well, I’m definitely one of the best shakuhachi players on that mountaintop.
In “Biiiiiig Stretch” – I hope that stroller had some monster brakes!